Kunsthall Stavanger is proud to present solo presentations by four young, Norwegian artists who have recently graduated from the art academies in Oslo, Bergen, and Stockholm. Each artist has been given a separate gallery to display their work. The projects are spatial and include concrete sculptures, surreal drawings, three dimensional paintings, and knotted installations.
Lene Baadsvig Ørmen
Baadsvig Ørmen is showing Dear Darkling – a series of abstract sculptures. The works have come into being through a spontaneous, tactile method of Ørmens own design, where she digs moulds directly into soil contained in a crate, before filling the cavities with concrete and coloured pigment. The concrete is then left to harden, completely covered in soil. The archaeological procedure of recovering the sculptures has a ritual dimension to it, resonating with the sculptures themselves, at first glance seemingly related to ancient artefacts or sacred objects from strange cultures. But it’s their
Kunsthall Stavanger is proud to present solo presentations by four young, Norwegian artists who have recently graduated from the art academies in Oslo, Bergen, and Stockholm. Each artist has been given a separate gallery to display their work. The projects are spatial and include concrete sculptures, surreal drawings, three dimensional paintings, and knotted installations.
Lene Baadsvig Ørmen
Baadsvig Ørmen is showing Dear Darkling – a series of abstract sculptures. The works have come into being through a spontaneous, tactile method of Ørmens own design, where she digs moulds directly into soil contained in a crate, before filling the cavities with concrete and coloured pigment. The concrete is then left to harden, completely covered in soil. The archaeological procedure of recovering the sculptures has a ritual dimension to it, resonating with the sculptures themselves, at first glance seemingly related to ancient artefacts or sacred objects from strange cultures. But it’s their ambiguity that holds our attention – the way they seem to point to an indeterminable territory, where the artist is both creator and discoverer, and the past merge with the present. Dear Darling was shown at UKS in Oslo 29.01 – 15.02.2015, curated by UKS' director Johanne Nordby Wernø.
Mari Kolbeinson
Kolbeinson is interested in the possibilities of painting, and in exploring how a painting can exist and unfold in the three dimensional realm. Her work often focuses on the relationship between the armature, surface and color of a painting. This creates the starting point of a series of explorations of the boundaries of the medium, in relation to the body and space, and how these can activate and make the work. The works such become an exploration of the precise placing of elements, how these may be activated by both the artist and the viewer, and how they may create a playful terrain of an ongoing, moving painting.
Magnhild Øen Nordahl
The epistemological question of how knowledge is created, systematized, and finally embodied is a recurring theme in Magnhild Øen Nordahl’s work. «Occupational Knots» is titled after a chapter in Clifford W. Ashley’s «The Ashley Book of Knots» (1944). The book contains nearly 4.000 practical knots, and the chapter Øen Nordahl refers to lists a variety of occupations from the archer to the yachtsman alongside recommendations on which nodes are most useful for whom. By studying mathematical knots and applying nodes in her sculptures, Øen Nordahl tests the boundaries of systematizations of knowledge – be they theoretical or practical. Here, she investigates the particular knowledge that is artistic knowledge, how it is applied, and whether it can be systematized and shared like other types of knowledge.
Tora Dalseng
The objects and figures in Tora Dalseng's drawings are in constant slow motion. The drawings are resemblant of a surreal dream state, where elements with strange and animated gestures are floating and repeating. Shifts in weather, movements in time, rising and falling curves and broken cutlery are ingredients in her self baked universe, where spacecats keep their tambourines ready and telephones are off the hook. In her drawings as well as in her sculpture, she is looking for some sort of strange simplicity, similar to the division of space in a Japanese garden or a set of words in a shipshape sentence.
b. 1984
Baadsvig Ørmen (b.1984, lives and works in Oslo) graduated from the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo in 2013. She has exhibited at UKS, Oslo; Another Space, Copenhagen; Fat Relic, London; Autocenter, Berlin; and Podium, Oslo, among others.
b. 1989
Kolbeinson (b. 1989 in Stavanger, lives and works in London) graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Bergen Academy of Art and Design in 2015. She has exhibited at Lydgalleriet, Bergen; Studio 17, Stavanger; and Largos des Artes, Rio de Janeiro, among others.
b. 1985
Øen Nordahl (b.1985 in Ulstein, lives and works in Bergen ) graduated with an MA in Fine Art from The Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm in 2014. She has exhibited at the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen; WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; and the Performa 13, New York.
b. 1982
Dalseng (b.1982 in Tromsø, lives and works in Oslo) graduated with an MA from the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo in 2008. She has exhibited at UKS, Oslo; Hacienda, Zurich; Tidens Krav, Oslo; and Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo, among others.
