The Fish in The Sky – a tale about love, art and cracked porcelain

THE FISH IN THE SKY is not just a novel. It is an art novel with rich visual content, a sensuous visual poem and a fictional exchange of thoughts between the artist and his Chinese curator in Berlin, where the reader senses other relationships than purely artistic ones. 

The novel's text together with Jurell's pictures gives the reader a delightful insight into a many-thousand-year-old Chinese mythology, but above all an everyday picture from today's China from a unique and unusual perspective.

- You're almost dead, the assistant laughs raw when she questions the clueless artist's age during an exhibition project in the Chinese ceramics city Jingdezhen.

As little as he knows about ceramics, he knows just as little about the young woman with whom he falls head over heels in love one stormy afternoon.

"Bye-bye" is one of the two words of English she knows, the artist hardly knows any more in Mandarin. They rely on the phone's translation app, which creates both opportunities and disasters. But in art and love it is important to dare - even when the conditions seem impossible. In China they say: The deeper the love, the deeper the pain...

The Fish in the Sky is a visually beautiful story that is enhanced by the fact that Donald Boström, one of Sweden's leading designers, gives the art novel a design that makes the book something to not only read, but to flip through and consider as a picture story in itself.

THE FISH IN THE SKY can be ordered through: studio(at)jurell.com
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Don't shoot the sun

Harsh is the light

that sears the wood of the hibiscus.

The bark splits and cracks

after seven days

rain and air now cool.

That is the day I take your hand.

I want to show you the mountains,

all so alike on the map,

as in those early days when you,

my dearest, boldly visited the gods

with your gaze.

Ask for whatever you wish – ask for this time,

glistening with rain and tears.

Clothed in flesh,

rapturously wounded by love

to snare the Qilin.

Head like a camel

body like a deer,

the eyes of a ghost,

the neck of a snake,

the stomach but a mirage,

scales like a fish,

the hooves of a cow,

the ears of an ox.

blood-red they are

like mulberries,

red as peach trees in the noontide glare,

like mountains clothed in red,

redder than their name.

Drink knowledge.

Drink wisdom,

drink sun storms,

slake your thirst, my dearest,

as Kuafu quenched his in the Yangtze.

Drink.

Savour, but do not shoot.

You must not shoot the Sun!

I, too, sleep badly – far from

what I need,

far from you, my dearest,

Kuafu chases the Sun.

We thirst, we drink,

we quaff it all,

even the sea where the Sanzuwu is born

at the start of each new day,

we plunge into the waves

in the busy tide of life.

We vent our spleen,

our entrails are on fire,

our bodies fuse in love.

Uncertain still, I read every word,

each so sensitively written.

In truth I feel such envy

for what you hide there in that recess

at the right-hand side of the casket

In your own name

between fish and bird

between Earth and Sun

you led six revolutions –

three ports of call, nine differences

Again the scorching sun.

Again the earth that cracks.

Fields of dandelions seed the heavens with feathery shrubs,

clouds of them, colossal

clouds of every shape and size, while we, you and I,

seed the ground, flooding the garden of the Prophet

with a sea of time now lost,

of incense and tamarinds.

Everything still lingers there,

out there in the afterlife of humanity,

all of it. Everything, my dear,

is there and all of it, my dearest, I long

to devour in an instant:

your lips, so black,

your black leather skirt,

black nylon stockings,

neon green trainers,

and the navy blue hoodie with Columbia University

printed in white on the back.

Your long black locks, henna'd on the ends

and that thick mascara.

The guardians of the crescent moon

cast quivering beams of golden light,

and houses of wall paper sprout from the earth

small, yellow in the pale light of dawn,

like plants, fibres, like the leaves of …

You find it hard to explain

how you drove all night long

in Fujian, high up among the mountains.

No longer is there any way back, my dear.

Not for you, not for me,

or Brancusi.

The alarm bells ring!

No rain,

no reigning monarch, no one wise enough to reign.

Hide, as well you might

behind your bag, your paper bag,

happy to have your Swatch watch

with its band in off-white silicone.

Sunlight dapples the plane trees,

now, at last, no one troubles to look.

And now, at last, we eat shao bing

and watermelon, too,

on Dong Yi Lu

a lorry disappears.

"Sorry."

"Well."

"Bye, bye!"

When day has turned to night,
at the rising of the moon
we see the world
anew. Contours, silhouettes, patterns ...
indicative yet indistinct, indeterminate,
clouds scurry across the sky.
Then shadows darken the Earth.
This is the night when things will happen!

月亮升起时，
在我们的视野中世界
焕然一新。轮廓、剪影、图案......
具有象征性却模糊不定，
云在空中匆匆飘过。
洒下的影子笼罩大地。
夜晚到了，多事之秋降临了!

BOOKS & CATALOGES

2019 Torg för Fri Fantasi. (Heidruns Förlag)

2017 Pranks in The Moonlight. (Heidruns Förlag)

2016 Bühnenstücke.Text in catalogue by curator Jutta Mattern in the catalog "Bühnenreif". Exhibition Catalog adjacent to the two exhibitions "Bühnenreif" Act 1 & Act 2, Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck 23 September 2016-23 April 2017.! 00 years anniversary of the birth of Dadaism:

2014 Narrstreck i Månsken - Pranks in The Moonlight. (Röhsska Museet)

2011 TUB 3 (Bokkonst, (3 unika ex)

2010 Goda Nyheter från Underjorden! Good News from The Lower World! (Karneval Förlag)
2008 Anrop till Underjorden! Calling The Lower World! (Sothern Prins, Beijing)

2008 Den Kärlekssökande Kackerlacksflickan (Bokkonst - unikt ex)

2007 Information. En katalog om Flickorna i Calais - en skulpturgrupp ( Beijing Blue Planet Color Prints, Ltd.)2006 Focus, Tricket -The Trick! (Manifest)

2000 Det Brinner! Ça brûle! Fire! text: L. Andrée, Jan Myrdal (Manifest)

1998 Hyllning till alla Vattenbärerskor / A tribute to all the Water Carriers text: L. Andrée (Respit Förlag)

1996 Mina damer och herrar... text: Carl Henrik Svenstedt och Peter Ekström, foto: Donald Boström (Ordfront)

1994 Métamorphose/Förvandling text: L. Andrée och Marianne Fors (Respit förlag)

1990 La Passion De Monsieur K/Herr K - En Passionshistoria text: L. Andrée och Marianne Fors (Respit förlag Strasbourg, France)

1987 Hoppets Triumf, text: Klas Östergren (Askelin&Hägglund)

1984 Rött blod vit frost, text: C. Palmaer (Mannerheim&Mannerheim)

Illustrated:

1999 Eskilstunakniven av Jan Fridegårs (Antikvariat Bokstädet)

OTHER CATALOGS: (not complete ...)

"Bühnenreif". Utställningskatalog i anslutning till de två utställningarna "Bühnenreif" 1 Akt & 2 Akt. Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck 2016 - 2017. 100 års jubileum av Dadaismens födelse.

...Och Natten Kom! Dansmuseet, 2016

Samverkan, Konst och arkitektur på Lindholmen. Text Kajsa Sperling, Lindholmen 1995PRESENTATION I KONSTTIDSKRIFTER (Senaste åren i urval)
Konstperspektiv 3, 2015

Konstperspektiv 1, 2017

Konstperspektiv 3, 2011

World Plate and Print Exhibition - Millennial Wind. Korea, 2011

Zenit 3, 2011

Paletten, 3-4, 2010

ART ETC, (indiskt konstmagasin) 2010

National Sculpture Magazine of China 2010

Akvarellen 3, 2008

月光下的恶作剧 - Pranks in The Moonlight

Publisher: Heidrun

Chinese and English languages