Entrée Retrospective 2012–14 by Entrée

Entrée Retrospective

‘12 ‘13 ‘14

EntrĂŠe Retrospective

Entrée Retrospective

‘12 ‘13 ‘14

Colophon

Publisher Entrée ISBN 978-82-999017-1-0 Editor Randi Grov Berger Texts Camilla Brochs-Haukedal Susanne Christensen Eleanor Clare Cecilie Holck Espen Johansen Heather Jones Mette Karlsvik Julie Lillelien Porter Anna Lundh Dillan Marsh Steinar Sekkingstad Arne Skaug Olsen Espen Søbye Line Ulekleiv Graphic design Asbjørn René Josdal Jens Johan Tandberg Print Livonia Print Artists Jørund Aase Falkenberg Azar Alsharif Rosa Barba Javier Barrios Are Blytt Christian von Borries Marco Bruzzone Danilo Correale

Espen Dietrichson Leander Djønne Ida Ekblad Tora Endestad Bjørkheim Sammy Engramer Serina Erfjord Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena Marit Følstad Kjersti Foyn Mathijs van Geest Pedro Gómez-Egaña Ulrika Gomm Steinar Haga Kristensen Jeannine Han Tamara Henderson Lisa Him-Jensen David Horvitz Marianne Hurum Toril Johannessen Omar Johnsen Sanya Kantarovsky Annette Kierulf Caroline Kierulf Terence Koh Lars Korff Lofthus Ingeborg Kvame Oliver Laric Erik Larsson Liz Magic Laser Else Leirvik Malin Lennström-Örtwall Gabriel Lester Lewis & Taggart Cato Løland Klara Sofie Ludvigsen Anna Lundh Bjørn-Henrik Lybeck Cameron MacLeod Jumana Manna Dillan Marsh Kyle Morland Bjørn Mortensen Santiago Mostyn Randi Nygård Oliver Pietsch Raqs Media Collective Dan Riley

Borghild Rudjord Unneland Athi-Patra Ruga Anngjerd Rustand Arne Rygg Vilde Salhus Røed Espen Sommer Eide Andrea Spreafico Kristin Tårnesvik André Tehrani Sandra Vaka Olsen Kjersti Vetterstad Lina Viste Grønli Sinta Werner Bedwyr Williams Magnhild Øen Nordahl Stian Ådlandsvik

Index

Espen Johansen, essay s.7 2012 s.17 Anna Lundh s.20 Anna Lundh, lecture s.24 Sinta Werner s.30 Stian Ådlandsvik s.33 Arne Skaug Olsen, review s.37 Camilla Brochs-Haukedal, review s.38 Cato Løland, Oliver Pietsch s.40 Anngjerd Rustand s.44 Susanne Christensen, essay s.46 Flag Bergen, Nesflaten, New York City & Stavanger s.49 Heather Jones, interview s.56 Natasha Marie Llorens, essay s.66 2013 s.71 Lars Korff Lofthus s.74 Magnhild Øen Nordahl, Omar Johnsen s.76 Azar Alsharif s.80 Vilde Salhus Røed s.84 Cecilie Holck, essay s.89 Dillan Marsh s.90 Camilla Brochs-Haukedal, review s.93 Eleanor Clare, Dillan Marsh, essay s.96 Christian von Borries s.98 Pedro Goméz-Egana s.100 Randi Grov Berger, essay s.102 André Tehrani s.104 Kunstforum, interview s.108 2014 s.113 Espen Sommer Eide, Kristin Tårnesvik s.116 Line Ulekleiv, essay s.118 Espen Søbye, essay s.122 Terence Koh s.126 Julie Lillelien Porter, review s.132 Oliver Laric s.134 Marit Følstad s.136 Steinar Sekkingstad, essay s.139 Terence Koh, book launch s.146 Mathijs van Geest s.148 Tora Endestad Bjørkheim, Bjørn-Henrik Lybeck s.150 Mette Karlsvik, essay s.152 Lewis & Taggart s.154 Bjørn Mortensen s.156 Cato Løland s.158 The Artists’ Supper Club s.160 Artists’ Biographies s.163

Mathijs van Geest And then itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s April already Flag Bergen 201 2

On Entrée Espen Johansen

It is March 2012, and the people of Bergen have just caught the first glimpse of spring. Entrée is already about to open it’s second show of the year, but this one is quite different. Ten international Bergen-based artists have been commissioned to design their own flags, soon to be raised all over the city of Bergen. This is the first exhibition where Entrée subordinates its immaculate white cube window gallery and moves into public space, interacting with a new and broader audience. Surely, lots of people must have stopped in their tracks for a split second or more to ponder the origin of a puzzling flag they had never seen before, before continuing on their daily quests. Others started their journey at Entrée, which served as a hub where all the flags were displayed. From wall mount brackets all along the wall, the large flags loomed from floor to ceiling in the crammed space. They bared a certain resemblance to the famous row of flags in front of the un building in New York, only that their considerable size (200 x 145cm) displayed indoors made Entrée look like a curious embassy of the arts. In the gallery one could get a map pointing out the different locations of the flags around town, so touring the city in search of the flags like a treasure hunt, became as much a part of the exhibition as the flags themselves. The project is equally complex and equally simple, so it should not come as a surprise that the flags also attracted attention from elsewhere, and later expanded and travelled to the picturesque village of Nesflaten, the city of Stavanger, Tromsø and to the buzzing metropolis of New York City (as part of Performa 13). With these adaptions, it grew immensely and came to include flags from sixty artists. The thought-provoking implications represented by the flag project appeals so strongly to us all because the flag holds such important connotations; entire nations can be signified through a flag, thus a flag can unite and segregate, and helps categorizing ‘them’ and ‘us’. The different flag designs were based on colors, forms, photos, pictograms, logos, texts and drawings, and partially blended in, partially stood out in the cityscape. Flags are a pretty much unanimously recognized as a powerful symbol, and its tremendous importance as a signifier is unquestioned bordering on the mystical in most parts of the world. So placing the flag under artistic scrutiny is nothing new (think Jasper Johns), but as opposed to treating the flag as a painting, this project does pretty much the opposite when it takes the works outside and they are allowed to keep their original function. Fast forward, to the autumn of 2014, Entrée was back in New York City to establish a small satellite gallery for a limited duration of time. The venue showed both scaled-down versions of ongoing or upcoming shows

Lewis & Taggart Double Standard II 24 karat gold leaf on promotional material from Standard Gallery, Oslo 2014

from the programming in Bergen, as well as exhibitions made exclusively for the space. The first exhibition presented Canadian artist-duo Lewis and Taggart, an exhibition that acted as a prelude for their upcoming show in Bergen (2015). A Nice Pair, which happened to open on September 11, centered on the formal investigation of things in pairs, the notion of the double and the poetic mirroring between them. Such as their plinth with marble top, stacked on top another identical plinth, showing the upper part of a small paper bag together with its mimicking double, handmade from metal. Or the series of promotional postcards from the commercial gallery Standard (Oslo), which were plated in gold leaf except for where the word ‘standard’ appeared (twice); a smart and humorous pun playing with the notion of the ‘double standard’ and the ‘gold standard.’ When Marit Følstad opened her exhibition Sense of Doubt in New York, she was simultaneously exhibiting in Bergen. The ambitious exhibition included two new two-channel video installations and a neon piece. From a fixed camera angle the viewer could see a back-faced woman staring into exploding fireworks, or being exposed to toxic CO2 gas. The sober, eerie aesthetic of the videos left the visitor to immerse in the atmosphere. In a large plywood installation a neon piece showed the letters, revolution, before some of the letters went out, changing the word into evolution, revolt, and finally ruin. The exhibition as a whole was a dark and almost bodily experience, enhanced from the ambient sound piece by musician Svarte Greiner. Entrée also went elsewhere when they produced the exhibition Trialog, with artists Magnhild Øen Nordahl and Omar Johnsen, for Platform Stockholm in Sweden. Nordahl’s sculptural works seemed to draw inspiration from modernist sculpture as well as from architecture and furniture. Comprised of steel tubes and plates resting on a wooden framework painted partially in bright colors, the works appeared to be dictated by utilitarian needs. That the objects also had a function was quickly realized, as the sculptures were as a matter of fact functioning as speakers. An analogue modular electronic synthesizer made by Johnsen was connected to the sculptures, and the instrument was able to play through the metal plates, which were connected to transducers. Through the experimental collaboration between the two artists, they managed to reanimate the sculptures. By giving them a function, they made them into something more than aesthetical objects, and by doing exactly that; they simultaneously drew attention to the craftsmanship and its physical qualities, both from a technological and aesthetical point of view. So far I have looked primarily at the outside projects by Entrée, and there are more, but at Entrée’s core is naturally the exhibition program run from their main venue in Nøstegaten 42. Looking at the programming, and comparing it to Entrée’s earlier years, it is apparent that the institution has matured since 2009. Starting out as an artist-run space with a very limited budget, Entrée has gradually developed into something that rather resembles a miniature Kunsthall. It does not behave like a merely static institution, satisfied regurgitating finalized concepts and exhibitions, but instead

takes a more active role as a producer of content in close dialog with the exhibiting artists. Those who are invited to exhibit are commissioned to make new works, and are given around a year preparing for their show, enabling them to marinate in their ideas for a sufficient amount of time. Bergen is a relatively small city but it can boast a vital contemporary art scene, and a number of the artists that have exhibited at Entrée are also based in the city. For several of them, Entrée was the place where they had their first solo exhibition, while others were more established. There is also a wide span between the types of projects being shown in the space, so I will in the following briefly present some of Entrée’s exhibitions from the last few years. In Something that stands for Something/Double Described Tautologies, Sinta Werner made two large-scale wall paintings in the gallery space and showed a series of collages. Through elaborate fictitious elements, Werner investigated semantics and the relationship between the representation and the thing represented. In Inset, Werner used the end wall of the gallery as both canvas and motif. Like a mise en abyme, she painted the wall as if it were approximately a meter further back, thus repeating parts of the floor and the walls in the painting (a work few noticed until it was pointed out). In the other mural, Raumsignatur, Werner imitated and blew up in size one of her geometrical diamond patterned pencil drawings, which were hung on the same wall on top of the other. These different approaches of repet ition and perception were both critical and playful, as she obscures preconceived ideas on original and copy. Stian Ådlandsvik’s Abstract Simplicity of Need consisted mainly of a bare drywall structure running zigzag the length of the gallery. On this structure there were several square holes as well as framed pictures of broken drywall. At the far end of the gallery rested a sledgehammer. This one, however, was hinged along the shaft, giving it a comical, helpless appearance. One cannot help but try to piece the different works together, decipher the narrative and figure out how they all relate to each other. It is tempting to imagine that the artist, or someone else, smashed holes in the drywall to the point where the sledgehammer gave in and became limp as a noodle. The muted, conceptual exhibition could also be perceived as an investigation concerning production and the material state of construction/destruction. Succeeding Ådlandsvik’s exhibition was Anngjerd Rustand’s The Dust Will Roll Together, which showed a series of minimal drawings and paintings. Mounted from the ceiling, the drawings were installed around the room, forming a kind of landscape one could enter, rather than merely observe from a distance. The thin paper reacted immediately to one’s presence, making the viewers extra cautious as they walked around in the exhibition. The drawings and paintings could be described as both lyrical and compulsive in their appearance, made with just enough careful strokes so that you would not think of it as unfinished. Colored pencils drew up lines that seemed to follow an inexplicable logic, composed through movement, rhythm and pauses. Some of the colored lines created shapes that looked organic, while other strokes seemed to be dictated by geometry.

Flag Bergen All flags united EntrĂŠe 201 2

Sinta Werner Inset Wallpainting 2012

3D scanning marble columns at Kode Art Museums of Bergen with Oliver Laric. 2013

Terence Koh installing sticks, stones and bones. 2013

For the Sake of Color was a photo-based exhibition with works by Vilde Salhus Røed, who, despite having studied photography, rarely takes photos herself. Rather, she explores and revisits notions and preconceptions of photography from a conceptual point of view, addressing its technical, material and narrative sides. The exhibition title points back to the archive of Leif Preus, a photo enthusiast, who later founded Norway’s National Museum of Photography. For the exhibition she recontextualized and modified these archived photos, and juxtaposed them with text and sculpt ural elements, creating new works that served as both representation as well as objects. Another archive-based exhibition was Korsmo’s Weed Archive, by Espen Sommer Eide and Kristin Tårnesvik. The material derived from biologist Emil Korsmo (1863—1953), who collected and catalogued throughout his career an extensive archive of weeds. His prized research helped agricultural workers increase harvest in a time of food-shortage after World War 1. The archive contains numerous charts, posters, texts, as well as plants, roots and seeds neatly organized in a herbarium. In the spirit of the bio logist, Sommer Eide and Tårnesvik started systematizing the material once more, after their own desires, which resulted in an experimental presentation of carefully chosen excerpts from their findings. Pages from the herba rium were being projected on sheets of paper hanging from threads in the ceiling. The projector lamps were the only light sources in the room that for the occasion was darkened with sunscreen filter on the windows. The archive was in a way turned inside-out, in the sense that its rational and scientific mode of being was being deconstructed into something irrational, but in turn into something more poetic. Instead of showing us the formula for battling weeds, they showed us some facets of the archive, the archivist and that which was being archived. Both exhibitions were later shown again, Salhus Røed’s exhibition in Preus Museum (Horten) and Sommer Eide & Tårnesvik’s exhibition at The Stenersen Museum (Oslo). For a small, non-profit gallery to produce exhibitions that gets picked up by museums and collected by them should surely be considered a remarkable feat, and it serves as a testament to the artistic quality of Entrée’s programming. In Yuanmingyuan 3D by Oliver Laric, concepts of authorship and reproduction were questioned and negotiated. With a 3D scanner, digital recordings were made at kode Art Museums of Bergen of seven columns from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. The files were then 3D-printed in white plaster and displayed on a large plinth in the exhibition, with the download address on the gallery window for everyone to be able to make their own copies. At the same time the original columns were being kept approximately half a mile away, already removed more than 4,000 miles from their original context, in the process of soon to be returned to their origin. Cultural artifacts of historical interest have been acquired by more or less cynical means throughout the ages, and despite being treasured possessions by museums all over the world, these items can sometimes cause a

serious cultural or political headache for the people involved, whom for different reasons claim ownership over them. In the case of the seven columns from the old summer palace in Beijing, they were purchased by the Norwegian Johan W N Munthe (1864—1935) a general in the Chinese army around the turn of the 20th century, who later donated his large collection of artifacts to the museum in Bergen. After almost a century in the museum’s possession, a very lucrative deal was made between a Chinese investor group and the museum, in order to have the columns returned to China for a long-term loan. Laric, through his gesture of 3D printing the sculptures and uploading the scanned files online, does not provide any sound advice in the matter as to who is their rightful owner. Instead he is pointing to the recurring predicaments concerning ownership and authenticity, and draws a parallel between this case from more than a hundred years ago, as well as copyright and ownership conundrums in the internet-age of today. The project created discussions online, and was later exported to James Cohan Gallery in New York and Kunsthaus Hamburg. Terence Koh opened the exhibition sticks, stones and bones on a dreadful and stormy night with a powerful performance onboard a small boat confronting an unruly ocean. Koh decided to close down two galleries in town, and at Entrée he blocked the doors with a humongous pile of firewood. A small note on the door explained that the galleries were closed, and you should walk to the other gallery, or take the boat that was set up as a shuttle door to door. The exhibition involved in addition to galleries Entrée and Tag Team also public space and an Artists’ Book, serving as a tour guide. A lighthouse was placed in the city plaza, and the journey between the locations became an integral part of experiencing the exhibition. Albeit only a brief description of a chosen few of Entrée’s exhibitions, it should be clear that the gallery has initiated a varied program. As an institution it does not show any signs of being governed by a set agenda, aiming to promote a particular niche of contemporary art. Rather it displays a conscientious cacophony of different artistic practices, mediums and expressions, contained within the pristine white cube that, whenever needed, becomes modified to the unrecognizable in favor the exhibitions. While it might be tempting to draw a line between recurring themes or elements, on closer inspection it becomes evident that there are just as many differences. The eclectic mix of artists reveals an experimental attitude and an ever-expanding scope. Generally speaking, the invited artists do appear to subscribe to a certain set of similar aesthetic principles, as the exhibitions usually emit a sense of sobriety and quiet grandeur. Looking aside from the attempt to pinpoint a possible red thread in the programming, what is clear is that Entrée has become more firmly established and more refined over the years. The gallery today is somewhat different from the gallery it started out as, more than five years ago. There has been a steady, organic growth and while the productions might be bigger and some of the artists might have become more established, Entrée’s curious approach appears to remain intact.

‘12

Anna Lundh Grey Zone January 21 – February 26

s.20

Flag Bergen March 24 – April 29

s.49

Sinta Werner Something that stands for Something/ Double Described Tautologies June 23 – July 27

s.30

Stian Ådlandsvik Abstract Simplicity of Need August 25 – September 30

s.33

Cato Løland, Oliver Pietsch Love is Old, Love is New Bergen Kjøtt September 15 – September 30

s.40

Anngjerd Rustand The Dust Will Roll Together November 10 – December 16

s.44

Anna Lundh The Year is a Python that swallowed an Elephant Lecture performance at 21.00 on January 20, 2012

Anna Lundh Tv time Video (1.53.53, loop) Selected sections from The Swedish Television broadcast archive 201 2

One of the ‘Frøken Ur’ recordings that Anna Lundh got a hold of outside Stockholm in an old archive. They contain recordings of Norway’s first ‘speaking clock’. Presented at Entrée on an overhead lamp.

Anna Lundh The Year is a Python that swallowed an Elephant Videostills 201 2

The Year is a Python that swallowed an Elephant Anna Lundh

[...] The TV program ‘Double Trouble’ was broadcast the 1st of October 1984, at 10 o’clock, on the dot. In Swedish, you would say prick, when referring to a very precise time: ‘Double Trouble’ begins prick 10. Conveniently, ‘prick’ and ‘dot’ mean exactly the same thing. For once, a translation of an idiom (between the Swedish and English) is possible without losing any visual correlation. Which isn’t always the case… Prick. Dot. The physical and literal manifestation of this word also includes a swift motion and a very short sound – when the pen hits the paper. It’s the NOW materialized in a subtle but precise gesture – something that is also reflected in how it is voiced. Both ‘prick’ and ‘dot’ have only one syllable. No reverb, no duration. It is just the moment. Ett ögonblick. That is what you used to say on the home phone, before you handed it over to the person who was requested by the caller. (Before everyone had an individual phone). One eye-blink. At least this length of time is possible to measure. The frequency rate of the blinking can be affected by what you are looking at, fatigue, eye injury, drug influence, or old age. But the actual blink itself stays constant in duration and is quite precise, about 1/3 of a second. But how long is one moment? One moment please... Myrornas krig. Another example of an expression where visualization is key, but not exactly a corresponding translation between Swedish and English: ‘War of the ants’ does obviously not create

the same mental image as ‘snow’ (which is what the static noise on the analog television is called in English). In the US, the full power broadcasts ended on Friday, June 12, 2009. In Sweden, the analog television network was shut down completely on Monday, October 29, 2007. In Norway, on December 1, 2009. In 1979, Swedish Television began to record and archive everything that was broadcast on their two channels, Kanal 1 and TV2. They recorded the entire day, not just the programs. That means that the time in-between was also captured as a side effect. The ‘wait-time’, the empty time, a nothingness of sorts – time that no longer exists on television (and certainly not online). We are now watching a selection of these ‘wait-times’ again, for the first time since they were originally aired (the gaps in-between programs usually don’t get reruns). If I propose that this is captured pure time – an archeological find if you will – the evidence of it’s passing in real time still doesn’t explain what time actually is. One thing time does, is to make other things become apparent. Sound, for example, needs time. (A tone without duration is silent). A movement is not a movement unless it’s performed over time. (If there was no time, we would be able to be at two places at once). Life and death are also dependent on time be defined. (A time of death, a t.o.d., is needed as proof in the official medical sense). ‘3 consecutive life sentences + 30 years’ is a real US Prison sentence (modeled after Super Mario?). If the prisoner resurrects, he will spend his entire second life behind bars, as well as the potential 3rd. Would he pull off the stunt once more however, he would be released. After 30 years… If we can lose time by doing time, we can also win time. Time can be spent, wasted, bought, saved (time is money). We can beat time and kill time. We can be out of time, or time can be on our side. There is free time, big time, small time, quality time, pizza time.

There is wintertime, springtime, summertime, and fall (interestingly, there is no ‘falltime’). Time is sometimes likened to a river that can rush, pour, drip, be still, or completely frozen. But this analogy is not very useful when trying to handle the practicality of our daily lives; fluids are too volatile. What is certain, is that we try to take control over time, no matter how slippery and elastic it is – as if it was not behaving so differently, depending on activity, focus or distraction. We have invented many ways to tame time, to measure it, divide it into sections we can count. As if it was something stable, constant, reliable. Like machinery. To agree upon these constructed units of time (the year, the months, the days, the hours and minutes, etc) has become crucial in order to be able to function in our daily lives. Or, if I never reset my clock and I just went on as though there wasn’t daylight savings, I would have a very difficult time participating in society. This need for precision and accuracy is a relatively new one, even in modern history, beginning with the train services being expanded (and thus the need for time tables to match up) as late as in the end of the 19th century. In 1934 there was even a new technology invented, so that we could find out the precise time, whenever we wanted. I am not talking about the smartphone, but the telephone service we have been so dependent upon for glitch of time in human history: Miss Clock. [...] Even with all these clever ways to measure and tell time, the brain doesn’t seem to be fully satisfied with just knowing how to refer to these units verbally, it seems to prefer to visualize in order to conceptualize elusive entities – much like with language idioms, like those I mentioned earlier – using inner mental images. At least in my mind, these images of time are very real and completely necessary for my existence. I consult them on

a daily basis, whenever I’m thinking of the past, the present or the future. These inner visualizations are never addressed or shared with others – yet they might hold a key to the way we function and exist. How personal are these images, and how can we get a glimpse of them? I decided to conduct an experiment. [...] The experiment begins with a form to be filled out by the test subject. The questions (for example ‘What time did you get up this morning’, ‘What did you have for dinner last Thursday?’, ‘Name something you will do next fall?’ ‘What is your favorite time of the day?’) are designed to make the subjects consult their inner images of time, in preparation for the next step. The subjects are then instructed to draw, according to the images in their mind, how they picture the year, the months, the week, the day/hours. This is followed by an interview, where the answers and drawings can be clarifed and discussed. So far, 150 subjects have participated, and have contributed over 600 images. It is time to begin the next phase of the project – to analyze and treat the data. [...] What follows are a few samples from the interviews, which explain the functionality of some of these inner time constructs, as well as reveal some personal reflections on time:

T : The year is like a python that swallowed

an elephant. The elephant’s movement through the belly indicates how fast or slow the year is going by. The elephant in the snake’s belly can be larger or smaller, depending on how I perceive the time passing. The previous and following years

are lined up after each other, like a stretched out snake with three little bumps. J : The year consists of summer – and every-

thing else. Summer is at one o’clock and is the only part that is significant, and therefore needs to be marked out. The week looks like a Bell-curve, where Wednesday is at the top of the curve. Here, the slowness that accumulates uphill, is replaced by a fast and swift motion down towards the weekend; the lowest point of the curve. Then the climb towards next Wednesday begins. H: The year is like a tube that time pushes

you through, and you come out at the other end. But the tube is not straight, it looks like a U-shape, where the spring and the fall move quickly, either down or up. Summer is more still on the bottom of the U-shape. Each year is added onto the previous one, just like growth rings on a tree. The week is a circle, which is divided into differently sized days. One half of the circle, contains 4 days, Monday to Thursday. The other half contains only three days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday. E : The year is like a railway track, where the

stations are spring, summer, fall and winter. The now is always at the bottom of the circle, with focus in the direction of travel, from an ‘ant’s perspective’, down on the track. This makes the track look enormous before it tapers off into the future. The background is space-like and dark, but not pitch black. The ‘year-track’ is a film strip, showing last year’s events that correspond to the same time period in the present year. As the time passes, the film strip is overwritten with new, current information. R : The year is blue, like the sky. The month is

like a cake, a ziggurat cake. The layers in

the cake correspond to the different months, which are stacked on top of each other. One week is a solid piece, like a brick. When the week is observed separately, it looks like an ellipse. It is a 3-dimensional teardrop shape, where one end is very tight and compressed, almost magnetic. The variation in speed during the week is therefore very apparent. Time has to fight against the pull of the magnetic field: it goes very slowly towards the top, where Wednesday is marked out in the figure. Then – it is quickly sucked back down and around the magnetic end, which represents the weekend. C : The year is a static wheel, or a compass,

on which the months have very specific placements: November is northwest. July is south, April is positioned in the east. I always see each week shifting, like on a conveyer belt. The now is always fixed in the middle of the belt, which is in constant motion. The near future is visible, and a little part of last week lingers, before it disappears. But when I think about the past, the conveyer belt comes to a halt, and the week becomes more concrete. The present is always moving, and if it’s the recent past it’s always connected in this engine… but the distant past has fallen off. It’s funny cause I never really thought about how I think about it, but I guess t his is how I think about it!

L : When I was a kid, 8pm was a very big

visual, cause that’s when I used to have to go to bed and stop watching TV. It was this harsh ridge in the day, when I knew I was going to be restricted by something. I also wonder if growing up in an age of digital time on computers rather than clocks, might change the way kids think about time now, if that makes it less spacial and more static?

T : The year has to be circle. A line is a crazy

idea. I would be too depressed to think about it as a line, because there has to be an end to the line. The circle keeps going. […] I feel bad for people who live near the equator. Things never change, it’s the same shit all the time, that would be horrible. E : The obsession of time is here (the us),

in Venezuela time is almost meaningless. People here had to be practical because of harvest and the seasons, so you have to plan ahead. For example, the thing here of doing your taxes and having to write down how much money you spent on everything the whole year drives me crazy. I don’t want to know if I spent 100 or a 1,000 dollars on coffee, I just want to enjoy the coffee. And if it’s less, great, if it’s more, unfortunate, but I hope I had a good time. I feel a cultural difference. In my country – or at least in my family and maybe I’m generalizing – there’s an obsession with the past and here in America there’s an obsession with the future. Time is important, but I don’t like thinking about time. My freedom is that I have no sense of time.

Adapted from excerpts of the lecture performance The Year is a Python that swallowed an Elephant, given by Anna Lundh at 21.00 on January 20, 2012.

The experiment begins with a form to be filled out by the test subjects.

Actress Randi BrĂŚnne next to the speaking clock (Telefonuret) to which she lent her voice, Bergen 1941.

Sinta Werner Raumsignatur Wallpainting with the collages Untitled (Folds Unfold) # I, II and III 201 2

Sinta Werner Untitled (Folds Unfold) # II Coloured paper, ink and marker on paper 201 2

Sinta Werner Discrete Folding # I and II Photocollage (3D) 201 2

Detail from Stian Ă&#x2026;dlandsvikâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s installation The room was long with windows 201 2

Stian Ă&#x2026;dlandsvik Otudone Sledge, hinges 201 2

Stian Ă&#x2026;dlandsvik The room was long with windows # III C-print 201 2

Stian Ă&#x2026;dlandsvik The landlord is dead C-print, 201 2

Fortidens arkitektur er fremtidens ruiner Arne Skaug Olsen

Stian Ådlandsvik er av den typen som liker å skru ting fra hverandre og sette dem sammen igjen på nye måter. Hovedinstallasjonen i utstillingen Abstract simplicity of need befinner seg et sted mellom arkitektur og skulptur, en nesten ferdig eller nesten ødelagt struktur av gips og lekteverk; de samme materialene man kan anta at galleriet er bygd av. På ett vis er dette et ekko av en velkjent strategi fra nyere kunsthistorie hvor avsløring av kunstens institusjonelle rammeverk har vært kunstens viktigste selvpålagte oppgave. Ådlandsvik er likevel langt fra å bedrive ordinær institusjonskritikk. Han synes i stedet å ta utgangspunkt i institusjonskritikkens integrerte rolle og avstemmer den mot en modernistisk formalisme. Den nevnte installasjonen har en uavklart status i utstillingen. Den er det eneste objektet i utstillingen som ikke har tittel, den er ordløs, fillete og mishandlet. Den er også veggflate for innrammede fotografier. Den befinner seg med andre ord et sted mellom skittenmodernistisk skulptur og utstillingsarkitektur, mellom brukskunst og kunst for kunstens skyld. Ådlandsviks kunst er ofte et forsøk på å avkle teknologien, arkitekturen og til syvende og sist det moderne livet slik det antar materiell form i våre omgivelser. Fotoserien The room was long with windows er en serie nærbilder av hull og lesjoner i gipsplater. Når installasjonen ikke lenger har spor av disse sårene, er det sannsynlig at fotografiene stammer fra et annet sted, og peker på en annen historie enn denne konkrete utstillingen. Fotografiet er alltid låst i fortiden, men det bærer med seg en fortelling om en mulig fortsettelse: fortidens arkitektur er fremtidens ruiner. I The room was long with windows avløser fotografiet seg selv som trompe l’oeil, det verken avslører eller skjuler noe som helst. Verket Outdone følger opp Ådlandsviks dialog med institusjonskritikken. Verket, en slegge hvis skaft er skjært i deler og satt sammen igjen med hengsler, står slapt lent mot veggen som en kastrert versjon av seg selv. Dette er et eksempel på Stian Ådlandsviks særegne form for humor som tillater høyst subjektive assosiasjoner. En slik mulig assosiasjon er å koble begrepene (og handlingene) abstraksjon og kastrasjon. Når historiske tenkemåter og praksiser mister sin opprinnelige funksjon, så får vi finne nye modeller som gir mening idag. Dette synes å være utstillingens hovedanliggende. Ådlandsvik plukker fra hverandre (kunst)historien og forestillingene om våre materielle omgivelser og gjør disse fortellingene ubrukelige. Men, det er nettopp da, når tingene ikke lenger kan skjule seg bak sin funksjon, at Ådlandsvik henter ut et kritisk potensial i det fysisk skapte. En slapp slegge egner seg bare til å slå inn åpne dører, men kastrasjon er kanskje et mer effektivt strakstiltak mot vanetenkning enn abstraksjon. Denne teksten ble publisert første gang 31. august, 2012 for Kunstkritikk.

Abstract Simplicity of Need Camilla Brochs-Haukedal

I utstillingen Abstract Simplicity of Need på Entrée er prosessen bak selve utstillingsarkitekturen gjort til en skulpturell fortelling om et kunstverks tilblivelse. Stian Ådlandsvik (f. 1981 i Bergen) er utdannet ved Statens Kunstakademi og Hochschule für bildende Künste i Hamburg. Han har hatt imponerende utstillingsvirksomhet både i Norge og i utlandet og er nå aktuell med Abstract Simplicity of Need, en separatutstilling på Entrée i Bergen. Entrées visningsrom er relativt lite, rektangulært og hvitt. Veggen som vender ut mot gaten er dominert av glass og gjør innholdet i rommet tilgjengelig for alle som går forbi. Den forbipasserende vil skimte det som tilsynelatende er baksiden av en utstillingsvegg i trekkspill-formasjon. På den ene veggen er det et innrammet fotografi som ved første øyekast virker litt malplassert. Kanskje er det en litt pussig glipp. Eller skal det være sånn? Den forbipasserende vil kun se dette – en relativt stygg bakside med et pent bilde. Forhåpentligvis mystisk nok til å vekke nysgjerrighet.

En arkitektonisk skulptur En besøkende vil oppdage at det ikke egentlig er tale om en bakside, det er en del av en arkitektonisk skulptur. Rett innenfor inngangsdøren, på fremsiden av «utstillingsveggen,» henger det første verket av fire i serien The room was long with windows. Fotografiet er montert på en gipsplatevegg som er dekket av hvit pleksiglass, og er det første betrakter ser i det hun kommer inn i rommet. Rektangler er skåret ut av gipsplatene, og danner både bakgrunn for det innrammede fotografiet, og skaper samtidig en lysende vri på det modernistiske bildet. Fraværet av produkt, av vegg, av substans skaper bildet. Etter hvert som man trer lenger inn i rommet, viser det seg at «utstillingsveggen» ikke er fullført. Et stykke inn i rommet er ikke lenger veggen dekket av pleksiglass, de brune og skadede gipsplatene blir synlige. Det samme blir veggkonstruksjonens bærende stålbjelker. Vandringen inn i rommet er samtidig en vandring tilbake i byggingen av utstillingsarkitekturen. Deler av prosessen, og samtidig resultatet, vises i den ferdige fotografiserien som smykker både de «ferdige» og de «uferdige» veggene med tittelen the room was long with windows #1 til #4. Disse bildene er vakre på avstand, i valører av grått som estetisk gjør seg spesielt godt på det hvite pleksiglasset. På nært hold er de kraftigere, de viser sårene etter sleggen kunstneren brukte til å slå hullene i veggene som senere ble omgjort til de lysende rektanglene.

Sleggen er også en del av utstillingen og står opp mot ende veggen, oppdelt med hengsler, ikke lenger slagkraftig, nå et kunstverk med tittelen Outdone . Utstillingen Abstract Simplicity of Need er både en samling av enkeltverk, men samtidig en helhetlig installasjon med et sterkt performativt preg. Verket er som en forlengelse av Entrées rom, bruken av det naturlige lyset som strømmer inn vinduene og ikke minst understreket i titlene på fotografiserien.

Verket som er verket om verket som er ustilt Ådlandsviks har ved flere anledninger gjort arbeider hvor en nysgjerrighet på tings sammensetning og oppbygning står i sentrum, som i verkene Laissez-faire unit #1 fra 2009 og Convergence fra 2010. I begge disse verkene kan en litt makaber kvalitet leses inn: i Laissez-faire unit #1 blir en handlevogn skåret i fra hverandre og restene smeltet om til en mynt. Den ødelagte og ubrukelige vognen må selv betale for seg, med sin egen substans. Eller i Convergence hvor bit etter bit av en kopimaskin blir tatt fra hverandre og tatt kopi av, inntil den ikke lenger fungerer. Maskinen dokumenterer sin egen tilintetgjørelse. Verkene utforsker hvor mye man kan ta vekk og plukke fra hverandre før produktenes bruksformål ikke lenger er mulig og står igjen som blottlagte materialer. I Abstract Simplicity of Need har Ådlandsvik gått selve utstillingen i sømmene, ved å konstruere og dekonstruere fundamentet, skjelettet – utstillingsarkitekturen og latt den overta som både arkitektur og verk. I stedet for å ødelegge, destruere, er det skapelsesprosessen vi får ta del i. De ca to ukene Ådlandsvik brukte på å sette opp veggene, slå hull, dokumentere og montere, blir vist oss ikke bare i fotografiene men også i selve verket. Det er et element av blottlegging ved å gjøre baksiden så fremtredene, men dette medvirker samtidig til den skulpturelle kvaliteten. Selve verket blir prosessen som viser oss prosessen som utgjorde verkene, i en slags evig sirkel.

Denne teksten ble publisert første gang 3. september, 2012 for Kunstforum.

Oliver Pietsch Because (03:20 min) Videostills 2008

Cato LĂ¸land Construction for Two Folded Blues Metal, cotton, chlorine, wood 201 2

Cato LĂ¸land Vanishing (Brown) Colored paper, chlorine 201 2

Cato LĂ¸land O Cotton, chlorine, metal 201 2

Cato LĂ¸land Pocket Work Cotton, chlorine, metal 2012

Anngjerd Rustand The Dust Will Roll Together Detail 201 2

Anngjerd Rustand The Dust Will Roll Together Installation view 201 2

Som at se former i flammerne Susanne Christensen

Som en håndfuld hår udspredt på et papirark. Der er en figur der, et væsen, men det byder sig til som flimrende og foranderlige skyer. Øjet kobler linjer sammen, ser et væsen, ser øjeblikket efter et anderledes væsen, ser en håndfuld hår igen, ser streger tegnet af en urolig hånd, ser streger som udtryk for en mental tilstand, og så fanger øjet igen figuren. Som at se former i flammerne, der er noget som knitrer og suser, noget som fortærer og udsletter. Det er husene som brænder, det er kroppene som falder – en blid katastrofe, en mild dystopi. Hvis jeg ser stregerne som udtryk for rastløs aktivitet, så peger jeg på kunstneren. Hvis jeg ser stregerne samle sig til et motiv, så peger jeg på genstanden, figuren. Hvis stregerne veksler og danser, alt efter øjet som ser, så peger jeg på mig selv, på betragteren. I Anngjerd Rustands værker – aktuelt på udstillingen The dust will roll together – virker disse størrelser ikke gensidigt ekskluderende. Noget er uafgjort, don’t pin me down. Tegningerne kan heller ikke fikseres som «bare» tegninger, de flygter bort fra væggene, de vil ud i rummet og fylde det med maniske streger, ild. I rummet bevæger de sig sagte rundt om os som hviskende blade i skoven – vi bevæger os rundt om dem, de bevæger sig rundt om os. Vi ser på hinanden, og måske vi også ser igennem hinanden. De rastløse streger findes også konkretiseret som et elektrisk møde mellem kobbertråde i et værk fra udstillingen Game of Life (2012). Kobbertrådene står på gulvet, fletter sig ind i hinanden og danner en slags flamme, som indrammer et urørligt rum. Fast som fjeldet. Tidligere tiders statuer skulle netop udstråle denne følelse af fasthed. Et beundringsværdigt menneskes præstation, dette menneskes fasthed, det strenge ansigt, som fortæller om at dåden er gennemført og landet reddet. Fast som fjeldet, men indeni findes et amorft rum, som følger statuens konturer uden at minde om noget menneskeligt. Our love is solid, solid as a rock. Fjeldets enorme tyngde, bare at se på det i mørket tynger dig ned. Vi flyder rundt om stenen som hektiske myrer, men stenen siger intet, den løfter ikke et øjenbryn, den bare er. Rustands Erratic (2010) gav os langsommelig vandring, af sten Stenskyen indrammede et urørligt rum, som om den egentlige statue var stedet – tomt, frit, uafgjort – som værket privilegerede, pegede på og ophøjede. Hvem er du, inden for hvilke landegrænser er du født? Det er uafgjort, jeg er født under himmelen som dig. I Rustands Hvelvingen (The Firmament) (2012) blev vores forestillinger om det vi kalder naturen igen vendt på hovedet. Stenen svæver, og himmelen, som vi nu tænker på som åben, uendelig, fremstår som et loft af forskudte blikplader. Stedet jeg står markeres af pladerne, synet af konstruktionen tynger mig ned.

Vi er flere i rummet, vidt forskellige kroppe, som akut mærker presset fra denne bølgende, blanke form. Internationalt anerkendte kunstnere præsenterer vandfald, regnbuer og tågeskyer i gallerirummet, naturens drama og skønhed på replay mens den langsomt dør mellem vores hænder. Hvelvingen (The Firmament) gør noget andet; her er himlen ikke et fascinerende, melankolsk show, men en historisk og diskursiv størrelse. What is behind that curtain? Vandet og lyset hober sig op bag hvælvingen, et show som ifølge gammeltestamentlig tro styres af Gud, som lader lys titte igennem som stjerner, og vand pible igennem som regn. Det er måske ikke tilfældigt at jeg kommer til at tænke på Laurie Andersons kølige, ironiske stemme: This is your captain, we are going down. Rustands iscenesættelser af naturen vil ikke lede os ind i en præmatur nostalgisk sorg over det tabte. Her gennemstrømmes tanken snarere af videnskab så vel som intuition, disse terrible signals som The dust will roll together også emmer af. Sig det igen, støvet vil samle sig. Det lyder som en skæbnesvanger profeti eller en inderlig bøn, men det er også et slogan, som står trykt på visse stykker viskelæder fra Faber-Castell. Også skrifttegn og ord titter frem i et slags negativt rum i billederne, disse er ikke manifeste, solide og centrale på en anonym baggrund, snarere synes de at være visket med et viskelæder midt i en gnistregn af aktive streger. Støvet vil samle sig, som i den dystopiske fremtidsfilm Brazil (1985), så vidt jeg husker tumler Robert De Niros revolutionære air condition-specialist sanseløst af sted, og langsomt klistres han til af avispapir, som blæser rundt i gaden. Hans bevægelser bliver langsommere, avispapiret begynder af blæse væk fra kroppen igen, og der er ingen dér, kroppen har opløst sig. På samme måde bølger Rustands tegninger mellem opløsning og form; kroppe forsvinder, dukker op, forandres og flimrer. Hvis der findes en livsvigtig besked, må du lytte grundigt, træde varsomt frem igennem informationsbruset, som var det en snestorm. Det er husene som brænder, det er kroppene som falder – en blid katastrofe, en mild dystopi.

Flag

Flag Bergen, Nesflaten, New York City, Stavanger, Tromsø

This public art project is ongoing and involves more than sixty (and counting) international artists, each making a statement with their own specially designed flag. The project address citizenship and asks key questions about identity and nationality. Flags are strong symbols of power used both in warfare and celebration, with many rituals connected them. The symbolic value in raising or burning a flag is universal, and the use of colors and symbols in flags have a long history, studied in the field of vexillology. The artists involved in the project takes on these concerns when exploring the flag as a medium, whilst pursuing themes of their own work.

Artists: Jørund Aase Falkenberg Azar Alsharif Rosa Barba Javier Barrios Are Blytt Marco Bruzzone Danilo Correale Espen Dietrichson Leander Djønne & Lars Korff Lofthus Ida Ekblad Sammy Engramer Serina Erfjord Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena Kjersti Foyn Ulrika Gomm Steinar Haga Kristensen Jeannine Han & Dan Riley Tamara Henderson Lisa Him-Jensen David Horvitz Marianne Hurum Toril Johannessen Annette & Caroline Kierulf Ingeborg Kvame Erik Larsson Else Leirvik Malin Lennström-Örtwall

Gabriel Lester Lewis & Taggart Klara Sofie Ludvigsen Anna Lundh Cato Løland Cameron MacLeod Sanya Kantarovsky & Liz Magic Laser Jumana Manna Dillan Marsh Kyle Morland Santiago Mostyn Randi Nygård Raqs Media Collective Borghild Rudjord Unneland Athi-Patra Ruga Arne Rygg Andrea Spreafico André Tehrani Sandra Vaka Olsen Mathijs van Geest Kjersti Vetterstad Lina Viste Grønli Christian von Borries Bedwyr Williams Magnhild Øen Nordahl Stian Ådlandsvik

Lisa Him-Jensen The supply of people always exceeds the demand Installed at Nyg책rdsgaten in Bergen 201 2

Lewis & Taggart Black Holes Installed at Strandgaten in Bergen 201 2

Kjersti Foyn Sky Installed at Nesflaten in Suldal, Rogaland. 2013

Magnhild Ă&#x2DC;en Nordahl Dit Installed at Blauwgaarden, Bergen. 201 2

AndrĂŠ Tehrani From Wounded Knee to North Korea: A Graphic History of US Military Interventions 2013

Interview with Randi Grov Berger by Heather Jones

Flag Stavanger is the third iteration of an ongoing public project by Norwegian curator Randi Grov Berger, currently on view daily outside of Kunsthall Stavanger. The ever-evolving exhibition has grown to include over 60 Norwegian and international artists, each addressing issues of citizenship, power, identity and nationality with a personally designed flag. Here Randi Grov Berger talks with us about the ideas behind her flag project, the founding of her gallery, Entrée, in Bergen, and the importance of naiveté.

In 2009 you teamed up with artist Cato Løland to found Entrée, an independent non-profit gallery in Bergen. What were you doing prior to opening Entrée and what was the drive to start your own gallery space in Bergen?

I had just finished a masters program in Art in Public Realm at Konstfack(University College of Arts, Crafts, and Design) in Stockholm under professor Marysia Lewandowska and was eager to come back to Bergen with some new ideas. Cato and I both got new studios in a collective that summer of ‘09, but we soon moved out to start our own thing that was more publicly available. The space we found was a typical storefront on a busy street with a large studio space behind it, which soon enough became the office for the gallery. We felt a great energy in the city at this time, like everything was possible. Bergen Kunsthall led the To Biennial or not to Biennial conference that fall, and I felt it was the right time to stay here and contribute to the local art scene. A new young exhibition platform was needed and luckily Cato and I were equally naïve to the workload in front of us. After Entrée was fortunate to receive three-year governmental funding in 2011, the ball just continued rolling. Interesting that you bring up naiveté. Do you think that that kind of energy and excitement was an important part of setting the experimental tone of Entrée?

Yes, and the lack of commercial interest. I think that since we were never interested in the role of being ‘gallerists’ as such, we were free from those strategies. We wanted to see if it was possible to combine an exhibition space with our own studio; something that failed and we became solely a gallery. We were from the beginning sort of a project room with the architectural framing of a white cube gallery.

You are now the sole artistic director of the gallery, and often invite emerging and mid-career artists to create new, exciting works specifically for the gallery space. You’ve commissioned projects from artists such as Terence Koh, André Tehrani, and Azar Alsharif. Is there any guiding curatorial philosophy for the projects you present?

In the beginning I used food-making as a metaphor for curating. Use good ingredients and just try not to mess it up. I like to make things minimal and simple, for the space to communicate the essence of the work. I invite artists that I’m curious about and want to work with; they often have research-led practices, resulting often in conceptual sculptures and installations. Entrée functions as a production site in-between exhibitions, where artist Dillan Marsh and I help build and install commissioned, site-specific work. It’s been an equal amount of Norwegian based and foreign artists, and in the last few years we have done more outside projects and collaborations. The artists are often experimental when doing their solo shows at Entrée – compared to one they would do in a commercial gallery. I try to be a good facilitator and my mission is to promote young artists to an international audience and help put Bergen on the map. In 2012, you invited 10 artists to each design a unique flag, which were then collectively exhibited at Entrée. What was the impetus behind this original flag project, Flag Bergen?

I’m a vexillophile. I love flags, and I always look for and notice flags when traveling around. I started seeing empty flagpoles in Bergen on the tops of buildings in the city center, and the idea came to me to use this existing component for a more integrated public art project. So for the show you’re referring to, we had one copy of each flag around on different buildings in the city center at the same time as they hung united in the gallery where we handed out maps. The flag as a format is simple and strong at the same time – a flag can be so innocent but suddenly become very political and symbolize something new in a different setting. An image becomes a statement when you hoist it up on a pole in a public space. I was curious as to what the artists would come up with parallel to feeling I might have overstepped and become too involved in the artistic process when making such a very strict format for them to take on. I soon found out that getting those empty flagpoles is not easy. I politely asked for permission and got involved in long conversations and many failed attempts to convince flagpole owners, this really intensified last year when doing the project again in New York. Again you acknowledge the importance of creative freedom for the artists that you work with. I’m curious about how they responded to the predetermined format of the flag.

They have responded by creating a multitude of different approaches to the

flag format. Some have asked to break with the format like stitching the flag, embroidery, using found material to assemble a flag and I had one proposal that replaced the flag with a sound piece. But for the project to hang together, I have pushed for a standard format, that potentially could be mass-produced like any national flag or corporate flag can. As you mentioned, a new iteration of the flag project was recently shown in New York as part of Performa 13, where you served as a curatorial fellow. The project has been shown in Bergen, Nesflaten in collaboration with L/R Residency, New York City, and is currently on view at Kunsthall Stavanger, each time changing and expanding to include new artists. How do the different environments shape the project, and what is your criteria for choosing new artists?

I want to have a combination of artists with different backgrounds and voices, with different relationships to the city were the project is taking place. I encourage them to work with existing themes from their practice when taking on the flag format. Different cities and countries have very different relations to the use of flags in public space, it absolutely shapes the meaning, and likewise does the area or building also create different narratives. An example is a white flag by Borghild Unneland with a simple small handwriting on it saying ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to’. Is the artist saying sorry, is it the landlord of the building apologizing for something, the curator, the city? – who’s speaking and to whom? Thinking about this, it was very interesting to read recently about the art-activist bleached American flags on top of Brooklyn Bridge… I wish I had seen it. Did you? It was incredible! And incited a wide variety of reactions from different parts of the city’s population. Your flag project behaves similarly as it appropriates pre-existing flag poles and effectively functions as an evolving international survey of current emerging and mid-career artists. Was this your intention?

No I never thought of it like that. I was lucky to get invited by Performa to make a new and larger edition of the project last year, and the chance to invite many more artists. It really made the project much more international and visible. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to secure that many flagpoles as I needed there, so I’m very glad I get to tour the project now, and add more artists along the way. Next year the project is invited to Tromsø Kunstforening and then we want to add in more artists from the region. After this I’m hoping to bring the project to yet another place abroad… And finally, do you have any other upcoming exhibitions or projects in progress that you can share with us?

This minute I’m in the middle of installing a new project with Marit Følstad here in Bergen, who I’m totally in love with. It’s a large immersive installa-

tion with new video work, neon and also a sound collaboration with Svarte Greiner. I’m excited that the opening night is co-hosted with Landmark at Bergen Kunsthall where we’ll have a concert and artist-talk. Later this fall, I’ll run a small Entrée New York satellite gallery while I’m in the city for a curatorial residency at iscp. Young curator Espen Johansen, who was also the main curator for the Terence Koh exhibition, will take care of Entrée Bergen in the meantime. Next year I’m looking forward to work together with Steinar Haga Kristensen, Lewis & Taggart, Øystein Klakegg and many more.

This text was first published August 19, 2014 for Kunsthall Stavanger.

Ida Ekblad Knotted Petiole 2013

Cato LĂ¸land ONYX Installed at Kaigaten in Bergen. 201 2

Anna Lundh untitled Installed in the Financial District, Manhattan, New York City 2013

Espen Dietrichson Untitled Flag Installed at Custom House at 1 Bowling Green, Manhattan, New York City 2013

Stian Ă&#x2026;dlandsvik Fold Installed at Fulton Market, Manhattan, New York City 2013

Cato LĂ¸land ONYX Installed amongst American Flags at Fulton Market, Manhattan, New York City 2013

Without Justification Natasha Marie Llorens

Jacques Derrida argues that in order to have a political order premised on an idea as abstract and empirically unfounded as ‘the people’ – citizens of a nation – there must be a space in which anything can be said, a space that demands no verification. ‘No democracy without literature; no literature without democracy… In no case can one dissociate one from the other. No analysis would be equal to it.’ He is quite emphatic. In his view, there is something that remains unrevealed in every instance of power’s manifestation. This something cannot be told directly, it cannot be related with recourse to thematic analysis. This thing, which Derrida calls a secret, can only be articulated as narrative, or as that which has an unstable relationship to truth. This is the case because democratic power itself has an unstable relationship to its subjects; it also has an unverifiable origin. Flag New York City is a project initiated by Entrée, which has invited sixty artists to propose flag designs. These will be flown throughout public space in New York and they are largely images; their structure is not exactly narrative. Their invitation recalls that of literature as Derrida describes it, however: say anything about the nation-state that a flag emblematizes. Picture it in any way, without justification. Let the images’ relationship to truth remain partial, subject to misinterpretation as the flag is encountered fluttering before a storefront in SoHo or Midtown, on a flagpole outside the Bankruptcy Court at Bowling Green, outside what was once a school, or at the seaport. On the flagpole, in the place where we usually find emblems whose meaning is rigorously policed by state and military force, we find instead a collection of absurd counter-representations. Perhaps they are not novels, but they are nonetheless acts of literature. Ulrika Gomm’s flag reads: ‘We have come to restore democracy’ in script scrawled across a white background. The statement was originally made by the US military forces invading the Caribbean island of Granada in 1983, under the auspices of ‘Operation Urgent Fury’. Gomm’s statement leaves the viewer to wonder: Who is we? Who assumes that they understand democracy such that they could restore it to us, to New York, to Americans? How can democracy be restored from without when it is located in the people that it represents? David Horvitz wants the night sky returned. His flag reads, ‘Give us Back our Stars,’ which assumes that these have been stolen from the citydweller by the street lights. There is also the assumption, latent, that there is something civic about the freedom to imagine, to dream, and to wish. What is a citizen, as emblematized by a flag, if they have no relationship to the night sky?

The flag of the UN, rather than make demands about democracy, takes an omniscient view. It is, officially, ‘a map of the world representing an azimuthal equidistant projection centered on the North Pole.’ Anna Lundh strips the emblem of everything except its continents, which float aimlessly in a sea of blue, splayed out without their grid to contain them or their laurels to hem them in. Toril Johannessen takes the same gesture of deconstruction a step further – she keeps on the colors of the UN’s flag and replaces the continents with the word unsee, suggesting that even the omniscient point of view is structured by some regime of recognisability. André Tehrani’s gesture is not to reduce, but rather to inscribe history on the surface of the flag, as his title states: From Wounded Knee to North Korea: A Graphic History of US Military Interventions. All the US’ transgressions against the sovereignty of others are lined up in neat rows, which mock the blank rows of red and white composing the US’s own sovereign flag. Jumana Manna takes a slightly more myopic look at the phenomenon of obliging people ‘for-their-own-safety’: the proliferation of seat-belts and seat-belt legislation. Her flag is made from bands of these vehicle safety devices sewn together but only partially, with their ends left to flap freely. What is protection? What is disobedience? These questions, she suggests, apply at every scale of the democratic body politic.

Anna Lundh untitled 2013

Athi-Patra Ruga Azania 2013

Arne Rygg Yes, we love 201 2

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Lars Korff Lofthus New Work January 26 – February 24

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Magnild Øen Nordahl, Omar Johnsen Trialog Platform Stockholm February 9 – March 3

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Azar Alsharif The distant things seem close (…) the close remote (…) the air is loaded March 2 – April 7

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Flag Nesflaten Collaboration with L/R Residency Co-curated with Gunhild Moe April 6—30

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Vilde Salhus Røed For the Sake of Colour April 27 – June 2

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Dillan Marsh June Twenty-First June 22 – July 28

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Christian von Borries I’m M Institute of Political Hallucinations Bergen Assembly —An Initiative for Art and Research August 31 – October 27

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André Tehrani Lost Allusions November 15 – December 22

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Pedro Gómez-Egaña Object to be Destroyed Performa 13 Abrons Art Center November 22 – 23

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Lars Korff Lofthus Svart skog Acrylic on paper 2013

Lars Korff Lofthus Tunnel (bl책) Acrylic on paper 2013

Magnild Øen Nordahl, Omar Johnsen Trialog Entrée at Platform Stockholm 201 3

Magnild Ă&#x2DC;en Nordahl, Omar Johnsen Trialog Wood, steel tubes, sheets of steel, tactile-transducers, analogue modular synthesizer 2013

Azar Alsharif All We Can Not Count # I-IV Collage, C-print 2013

The distant things seem close (…) the close remote (…) the air is loaded (…) Everything is everything (…) False is also real (…) so hear this mixture/this scripture (…) Now these words (…) won't accept deception (…) Sometimes it simply seems (…) a glacier becomes specular streams! Azar Alsharif, 2013

Azar Alsharif The Distant Things Seem Close #IV Collage, C-print 2013

Vilde Salhus RĂ¸ed Colour Corrections #2 C-print 2013

Vilde Salhus RĂ¸ed Colour Corrections #10 C-print 2013

Vilde Salhus RĂ¸ed Yellow Bush; From the series; A Carpet of Primroses Cibachrome collage 2013

Vilde Salhus RĂ¸ed Red flowers; From the series; A Carpet of Primroses Cibachrome collage 2013

Vilde Salhus RĂ¸ed Colour Corrections #9 C-print 2013

Vilde Salhus RĂ¸ed A Carpet of Primroses Cibachrome collage 2013

For the Sake of Colour Cecilie Holck

Men verdensrommet burde ikke være (kull) svart, det burde være (vann)blankt, ikke motsatt (bek)svart, altså (snø)hvitt, men gjennomsiktig og ikke-opakt. Man skulle kunne se utover og utover, som gjennom luft, og det svarte skulle ikke være svart, men uendelig gjennomsiktig. Lurer på hva som egentlig hadde blitt a da, og til hvem, svarer jeg. Men så er det jo nettopp slik det er, spør du. Universet er blankt, egentlig ikke svart, overhodet ikke annerledes enn ønskedrømmen din. Vi er enige. Universet burde være hvitt. Lady refleksjon eller lys antikk. Et verdensrom som var stilig innredet. Med hvite stresslesser og chaiselonger, vannsenger, saccosekker og ergonomisk riktige kontorstoler, sirkulerende i bane rundt hvite planeter. Helt usynlig. Så jorden gikk tom, så tingene ble til å tenke på, så tankene hadde noe å hvile i. Vi kan ikke sette hverandre likevel. Der oppe trenger vi oss ikke. For syns skyld. For hvilket syns skyld? Det vi lager er vitner. Møbler. Satt. I system.

Dillan Marsh June Twenty-First Installation view 2013

Dillan Marsh June Twenty-First Opening night, 21 June, 2013

Fart, glede og kosmiske referanser Camilla Brochs-Haukedal

Med utstillingen June Twenty-First på Entrée i Bergen, byr Dillan Marsh på flere assosiasjoner, fra pop art til motorsykkelløp, fra midtsommerfeiring til reklameskilt.

Slagverk, motorsykkel og reklame Gjennom en stor skjelettlignende stålkonstruksjon trer vi inn i Dillan Marshs (f. 1980, UK) romdekkende installasjon, June Twenty-First, laget spesielt for Entrée. Utstillingen består av flere komponenter som hver for seg fungerer som selvstendige verk, men utstillingen har én tittel og ingen verksliste, det er derfor naturlig å lese den som én installasjon. Langs veggene, innenfor «porten», er det snekret opp «benker», eller temporære tribuner, umalte og ubehandlede. Med en skrånende fremside er de litt ubehagelige å sitte på, og uten å ha bli invitert til det, hadde jeg nok ansett dem som en ramme rundt resten av utstillingen, en ramme som for øvrig fint knytter de enkelte verkene sammen til en helhet i rommet. I midten av hesteskoen av tribuner troner fire «søyler» i forskjellig høyde, bygget opp av gummidekk, trommer, flerkantede esker og motorsport-hjelmer. Alle komponentene ser ut til å være godt brukt og bærer preg av å ha levd et liv før de som object trouvé ble deler av Marshs kunstverk. Bak søylene på motsatt vegg, vis a vis inngangsdøren, er to flagg i kryss i rød og gult. Fargene og mønstrene går igjen i den store stripen som dominerer hele vindusveggen til Entrée, og på skjermene som åpenbarer seg i sideblikket idet man går inn i rommet. Denne skulpturen er satt sammen av tre skjermer, stroppet sammen i en stabel. Bildene på skjermene varierer i hastighet og virker både forstyrrende og samtidig levende og livlig, mye takket være fargene og de raske, repetetive bevegelsene.

A day at the races Dekkene, flaggene, materialene og ikke minst hjelmene, sammen med en sterkt tilstedeværende lukt av gummi fra dekkene og de sterke fargene gult og rødt, gjør det vanskelig å løsrive seg fra assosiasjoner til motorsykkelløp. Jeg innrømmer et tidligere flerårig fan-forhold til Eurosport, MotoGP, Alex Barros og Valentino Rossi, men selv uten dette er assosiasjonen svært nærliggende.

Med gult og rødt som dominante farger i utstillingen, er assosiasjoner til store reklameskilt for bensinstasjoner som Shell heller ikke langt unna. Marsh har tidligere brukt grep fra reklameskilt og merkevarebygging i sine verk. I utstillingen June Twenty-First er det selve virkemidlene i den kommersielle markedsføringen Marsh tar i bruk: de sterke fargene, «brandingen» av Entrées store vindu og det repetetive mønsteret på skjermene. Med utstillingen gjør Marsh galleriet til en større del av sin utstilling enn bare et rom å vise kunsten i. Entrées egen logo er fjernet fra vinduet, i stedet er vinduene dominert av to store, røde linjer som møtes i en spiss i midten og som gjør Entrée svært synlig fra utsiden, et blikkfang i gaten på samme måte som de store Shell-skiltene er langs motorveiene. Som Entrée skriver på sin nettside: «Entrée finds itself re-branded and built into the concept of the work on show». Med disse grepene er referansene til pop art også sterkt tilstedeværende, i både både form og innhold. De sterke fargene og det repetetive mønsteret samt Marshs bevisste bruk av kommersiell markedsføringsvirkemidler kan ikke annet enn å gjenkalle Andy Warhol.

Å samles rundt bålet Åpningsdagen til Marshs utstilling falt på 21. juni, som er sommersolverv, årets lengste dag. Fest og feiring er assosiert med tiden rett etter denne dagen i året med flest soltimer. Her i Norge er det Sankthans som gjelder, med feiring, bål og fest, men det å feire midtsommer har tradisjoner mye eldre enn kristendommen. Ved å kalle utstillingen, eller installasjonen, June Twenty-First, påkaller Marsh en positiv stemning assosiert med sommer, sol, fest og ritualer. Tittelen har tilsynelatende ikke noe umiddelbar sammenheng med verkene utstilt, annet enn at åpningen falt på denne fredagen. Sammenhengen må vi derfor reflektere rundt selv, hjulpet av introduksjonen på Entrées nettsider, også de for anledningen rød- og gulrutet lik mønsteret på skjermene og ett av flaggene i visningsrommet. Gjennom tittelens referanse til sommersolverv søker utstillingen, ifølge nettsiden, å vise hvordan vi gjennom deltakelse i større eller mindre feiringer, tilstelninger og ritualer også er del av et større system, faktisk et kosmisk system. Denne forbindelsen synes svært subtil i opplevelsen av installasjonen, det er ikke lett å få fatt i hvordan kunstnerens overordnede budskap skal overføres. Men den nye publikasjonen av Apis Press, lansert samme dag og i forbindelse med utstillingen, med tekster av Eleanor Clare, kan kaste lys over Marshs inspirasjonskilder, og hvordan vi kan tolke tittelen og verkene utstilt. I tillegg til å havne på årets lengste dag, markerte åpningen av June Twenty-First lanseringen av nevnte publikasjon, og lanseringen av første utgave av Utstillingsguide for Bergen (utstillingsguide.no). Vernissagen markerte altså flere begivenheter og gjorde installasjonen i seg selv til en

arena for festligheter og feiring. Og det er en positiv opplevelse å være i rommet med de bevegelige skjermbildene og søylene av dekk og trommer og hjelmer, de sterke fargene og den litt skarpe lukten. Som installasjon har Marsh fått mye ut av Entrées lokaler, det er en vellykket bruk av rommet. Installasjonen kan leses og tolkes på mange måter, det er mye å ta av både i referansene og i opplevelsen av rommet, og er vel verd et besøk. Men på tross av at jeg aner noen interessante assosiasjonene rundt ritualer, systemer og vår alles søken etter tilhørighet og plass i den store sammenhengen, må jeg innrømme at jeg fremdeles finner det litt vanskelig å løsrive meg fra inntrykket av å være på et MotorGP-løp.

Publisert for første gang 12. juli, 2013 for Kunstforum.

Burn out Eleanor Clare & Dillan Marsh

You feel your breath inside the mask. It is hot and damp. You hear yourself breathing, heightened. The mask is here: between the wearer and the world, the watcher and the watched. Through the grainy unsteady image and the sound, distorted by low quality compression, it seems like something is trying to break through. The first few seconds sound like noise pulled through a synthesizer, screaming and kicking as it emerges, fighting for life in its new digital form. Something about it is alarming, frightening, tortured and angry. It is half-formed, raw and unrefined. Streaks of red and white light flash across the screen. It is an arena for action. Something about this situation that is chaotic; yet there is an element of control. The driver makes tight circles around a central axis. At first this is demarcated by a traffic cone, but as things proceed, the silhouette of a young man moves into the centre. The car stops and revs up, creating billows of smoke in the air, obliterating vision for a few moments. As the car skids and screeches, I feel a sense of alarm. This is coming close to disaster for the lone, central figure, potential victim of the anonymous driver, a sacrifice for the entertainment of onlookers. I can sense also the collusion. One figure willingly places his trust in the other. There is a tension between these two. A smoky, fiery object is spinning recklessly. One might say things had spun out of control. Not quite though; for to completely lose control would mean total destruction. It would mean the end. It all went up in flames. This is a sudden, intense and short lived burst of energy. More like a supernova than the sun, and more akin to a meteor careering around a planet, than a planet orbiting the sun. It was more than this, though. This scene was not simply about objects in space; it was human. It was a game or a task, perhaps even a ritual. Although I can identify it as a human activity, shot through with the implications of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relationship to another, from my vantage point it also seemed anonymous. In the dark, these figures could be anyone, totally unrecognisable by the light of day. In this moment they had a relationship to one another. Certainly for the two central protagonists, it was one of

great significance and trust. At any other time, on any other level, it was unclear. In this sense, the action had become symbolic. The figures could be understood as archetypes. Ones which, for reasons I cannot yet identify, I associate with the masculine. In the threat of a loss of control, images had already flooded my mind. I remember as the helicopters circled in the air above my house one evening in August. I had no idea why it was happening, but this circling was incessant, the noise repeatedly coming close and fading away, swelling and receding, but never quite out of my consciousness. It always gives me a slight sense of unease, the idea of something being under surveillance, coupled with the notion that something might be wrong. Why this surveillance from such a great height? It is a safe distance for the one who watches. Then I remembered the destruction that had taken place, just minutes away from my home. The aerial images of buildings and cars set alight, and rioters surging through the streets, anonymous from this point of view. London’s Burning. I feel alive, and the world – it’s turning inside out Yeah! I’m floating around in ecstasy So don’t stop me now, I’m a shooting star leaping through the skies Like a tiger, defying the laws of gravity I’m a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva I’m gonna go! go! go! There’s no stopping me! I’m a rocket ship on my way to Mars On a collision course I am a satellite, I’m out of control I am a sex machine ready to reload Like an atom bomb about to Oh–oh-oh-oh-oh explode! (Extracts from Don’t Stop Me Now, lyrics by Freddie Mercury, 1978)

Excerpts from June Twenty-First by Dillan Marsh with text by Eleanor Clare, published by Apis Press, Bergen 2013.

Christian von Borries Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m M Installation view from the Institute of Political Hallucinations (EntrĂŠe) Bergen Assembly 2013

Pedro G贸mez-Ega帽a Object to be Destroyed A Performa 13 Commission 2013

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Object to be Destroyed

Cut out an eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow.

Such were the initial instructions given by Surrealist Man Ray for his much renowned Object of Destruction, first presented as a drawing in 1923 representing a metronome with an eye stuck to its pendulum. Now the piece is protected behind glass at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, but as Pedro Gómez-Egaña suggests 1 – there is an inherent romantic violence expecting to be triggered. In Object to be Destroyed Gómez-Egaña instructed a series of ushers to lead small groups of audience members into a dark theater to experience his performance. Audience members paused, standing in the dark passage for the first part of the piece where they heard, but could not see Henri Dutilleux’s Au gré des Ondes (1946) played tenderly on a piano behind a curtained wall. The wait escalated their imagination and expectations to what they could sense happening with the music in the other space. Next, the guide gently directed the group beyond the curtain, where five chairs were placed in a half-circle directed at a performance space with a distance of about ten feet in front of another wall of beige velvet curtains. The audience was invited to sit down for the second part of the piece, the lights changed, two women in grey uniforms moved synchronically as the piano started again repeating the same solo-piano composition. The women turned their attention toward two golden objects, each picked up from the floor. These were pendulums, which were ceremoniously and magnetically moved toward each other. As the piano music ended, the pendulums, which were both connected to filaments and fitted with strong neodymium magnets, were suspended in the air with half an inch of air between them, an arrangement that was arduous to achieve. The lights changed and the same young man who led them here swiftly pulled aside a curtain and invited the group into yet another chamber, providing access to the ‘back stage’ of the performance. This room was arranged as a domestic space with plants, tables, carpets, lamps and crystals. For this third part, again the group was invited to sit, this time on low wooden benches looking back at the curtains through which they had just passed. Once seated, they heard steps from behind the curtains. As the piano piece started again, for the third time, now a familiar melody, they sensed another group following behind them. The man who had guided them started the same careful process of placing two magnetized

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pendulums in balance, very gently and very precisely. The group witnessed the strong magnetism as the pendulums hung in the air. Once Dutilleux’s Au gré des Ondes concluded for the third time, the group was ushered out by their guide, passing the pendulums in tension when moving out of the room. In the next passageway a different uniformed man was watching over a table of purple amethyst crystals (each containing their own magnetic field) as the group dispersed from the theater. The audience then walked in a reversed half-circle to where the action of the piece had begun, while simultaneously a new group of audience members were seen entering the performance. In total three groups circulated inside this time-machine of GómezEgaña’s, Object to be Destroyed where a group of four dancers were instructed to lead and perform. The performance was like a theater of mirrors, a visual live performance arranged as half an hour’s journey that brought together symbolic and historical time, mystical fantasies and the magical experience of science at the point of intersection where bearing witness meets spectacle. Object to be Destroyed was a reflection on how time has clear signifiers but also, as an experience, how time is the result of flows of actions and perceptions. Gómez-Egaña has pointed out, we walk on the street, we go to the train stop, we get in the train, we reach our stop and walk on the sidewalk, we step into an elevator, step out; open the door and we’re home. Everyone is doing this, we are like little rivers of people fuelling a civic machine administrated by ‘stop’ and ‘go’ signs, devices, notifications and vehicles.

In this context, the idea of an interruption of our compulsive everyday habits and routines – is what has inspired Gómez-Egaña’s recent body of work. He offers the audience a disruption, the possibility for moments to observe and focus, and in these instants of contemplation, the sudden immobility of a gesture might trigger a renewed curiosity toward the familiar magic that we daily experience.

Randi Grov Berger

1 Gómez-Egaña referenced Man Ray’s Perpetual Motif (Object of Destruction) during an introductory lecture about his work (Artist Class: The Beating Motif), at the Performa Institute on November 19, 2013 prior to his performance at Abrons Art Center.

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AndrĂŠ Tehrani A Radically Condensed Timeline of French History from March 22nd to May 13th, 1968 Sanguine powder on paper 2013

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André Tehrani Mémoires (failed remake) Chlorine on dyed felt, shaft of pool cue 2013

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AndrĂŠ Tehrani Alternate Routes Powdered graphite, acetone transfer and pencil on paper 2013

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AndrĂŠ Tehrani BUILT BY AN IDIOT FULL OF SOUND AND FURY SIGNIFYING NOTHING Lacquer on restored wooden bollards, plastic construction netting, LP record,

spray painted traffic barrier, wooden shelf, adhesive plasticand pencil on paper 2013

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Q&A with André Tehrani Kunstforum

Can you tell us about your current exhibition?

The exhibition at Entrée is the second installment of a tripartite series of solo exhibitions which was recently introduced with a show at Noplace in Oslo. All three exhibitions investigate the poetic languages, political activism and inevitable recuperation of utopian movements such as the International Movement For an Imaginist Bauhaus (imib) and the Lettrist and Situationist Internationals (li/si). The exhibition title (Lost Allusions) is a reference to a paragraph in Raoul Vaneigem’s 1967 book The Revolution of Everyday Life, which describes the process that allows revolutionary practices to be commodified and integrated into the media culture of advanced capitalism. Making art which further historicizes revolutionary initiatives such as these also becomes part of this recuperative process, of course, but the intention of the exhibition series was more to examine the shifting forms of the revolutionary impulse that the li/si inherited from the dadaists, which was later to be rediscovered by the subcultures of punk, post-punk and Acid House in the 70s and 80s. This is the second exhibition in a trilogy. Does this also mean that new works will be included in each exhibition? What is the relation between the art works?

Yes, the exhibition at Entrée presents three new pieces and some of the stuff that was shown in Oslo is not included in the second presentation. The third exhibition – which is scheduled to take place at Tegnerforbundet in Oslo next spring – will mainly consist of new pieces which deal more with utopianist notions of city planning and the role that a radical re-imagining of architecture and urban space played in the revolutionary prog rammes of said groups. All the works in the exhibition either allude to or make direct references to utopianist approaches to art and politics, and the individual pieces were made with a highly heterogeneous display in mind. I wanted the presentations to appear more as group shows or historical exhibitions than to produce works easily identifiable by a specific aesthetic signature. What is the idea behind doing this as a trilogy? What are the consequences on the art works and the exhibitions when they are part of a trilogy?

Seeing as the story of the li/si and their countercultural legacy is a long

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and complicated one, the serial exhibition format allows for producing an extended narrative which makes use of a variety of approaches to the subject matter. Hopefully, the three exhibitions provide for a more nuanced treatment of the material at hand than one exhibition would. You tend to work in several different materials and mediums. What is the common denominator, so to speak, if there is any?

My work is very much rooted in historical source material, of course, and I think more along the lines of entire exhibition displays when making pieces. The common denominator of the individual pieces is that they all have their specific place in the overall display as building blocks for a premeditated narrative. What is your next project?

I’m currently finishing a residency at wiels Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, Belgium and working on a group exhibition for their project space which I’m co-curating with Anthea Buys (who also contributed a text to the catalogue for the shows at Noplace and Entrée). The show is set for April next year and will feature four or five Scandinavian and SouthAfrican artists. Other than that, I have to prepare the concluding show of the exhibition series at Tegnerforbundet for next spring. Also, I’ve just written a short text about my favorite photo for the Norwegian photography periodical Objektiv, which will be printed in their December issue. How would you describe your work process from idea to work?

The research part plays an instrumental role, of course, and I spend a lot of time reading and unproductively googling things. More practically, I outline a theme that I’m interested in working with, pick up some books and wait for the stuff to ferment a little before rolling up my sleeves. The ideas for specific pieces often pop into my head when I’m out running and I tend to pursue most of them on what Ed Ruscha would call ‘blind faith’. When the piece is finished, I decide if it was worth the effort or not. Shortly put, it’s part careful planning and part whim. What are your main influences when creating a work of art?

My main influences come from seeing exhibitions and I pay close attention to how shows are installed when visiting museums and galleries. With regards to the two solo exhibitions I’ve installed this autumn, I’ve been particularly influenced by interpretive historical exhibitions and I’ve tried to use the pedagogical format typical of historical exhibitions for more poetic purposes. There is something about the factuality and professed neutrality about these kinds of displays which has a very curious kind of poetic potential, I think.

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Can you name an artist/artwork or exhibition that has inspired you?

I tend to enjoy exhibitions by artist who stick to their guns and just do their thing consistently over a very long period of time. Artists like Thomas Bayrle, Hanne Darboven, Louise Lawler and Ed Ruscha would be good examples of this approach. By younger artists (living or not), I really like the works of Danh Vo, Mark Lombardi and Sam Durant. Is there a writer or book, fiction or theory that has inspired your works?

I’ve been very interested in postmodern American literature the last five or six years and I’ve read a lot of Thomas Pynchon, William T Vollmann and David Foster Wallace during this period. I’m especially interested in how the novels belonging to this particular tradition work; how they usually are dense with trivia, facts and informational noise and yet on antother level retain enough structure to function as fairly conventional stories with a narrative payoff. In some ways I suppose I’m interested in trying to find a spatial equilvalent to this kind of narrative in my exhibitions, which are similarly overloaded with references that make up a contextual basis which the audience can choose to ignore. Why is art important?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this question during the last couple of days when following the debate about the cuts proposed by our new right-wing government for the upcoming cultural budget. There is clearly an unspoken imperative about art being useful for stimulating economic growth and an expectation for it to generate substantial popular interest in the rhetoric of Norway’s neo-liberal right. For me, art is important for completely different reasons. I think its relevance lies in providing a place for forms of expression which are too outlandish and esoteric to be communicated in either politics or other forms of cultural media. In my opinion, the purpose of art is to delineate a terrain where more marginal forms of thought and communication can be experimented with. Although the exhibitions I’ve been working on this fall have been fairly pedagogically communicated, I do not necessarily subscribe to the notion that the experience of seeing an exhibition should be meaningful or instru ctive. On the contrary, I think that art’s real potential lies in its ambiguity and its scrambling of the relationships of images and their assumed content. The ideology of the commodity upholds the idea that images have fixed meanings: owning this car signifies that position in the social hiera rchy; wearing this t-shirt signifies that subcultural preference and so forth. To me, art is important as an arena where these precarious relationships are contested and revealed as susceptible to change.

This text was first published November 11, 2013 for Kunstforum.

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Espen Sommer Eide, Kristin Tårnesvik Korsmos ugressarkiv January 25 – March 2

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Terence Koh sticks, stones and bones Curated by Espen Johansen March 15 – April 13

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Oliver Laric Yuanmingyuan3D May 22 – July 13

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Marit Følstad Sense of Doubt August 22 – October 26

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Entrée New York Satellite Lewis & Taggart, A Nice Pair s.154 September 11 – 28 Terence Koh, Blindhet og lys s.146 Book launch at New York Art Book Fair September 28 Bjørn Mortensen, Elephant s.156 October 3 – 12 Marit Følstad, Sense of Doubt s.136 October 17 – 26 Cato Løland, VESSEL(S) s.158 November 7 – 23 Mathijs van Geest The passenger eclipsed the object that I could have seen otherwise October 31

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Tora Endestad Bjørkheim, Bjørn-Henrik Lybeck s.150 Curated by Espen Johansen November 14 – December 21 The Artists’ Supper Club March 13, May 15, November 23 Flag Stavanger January 1 – December 31

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Espen Sommer Eide, Kristin TĂĽrnesvik Archival material from Korsmoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Weed Archive 2014

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Espen Sommer Eide, Kristin T책rnesvik Korsmos Ugressarkiv Exhibition view 2014

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Røttene vokser nedover, stilken oppover Line Ulekleiv

Planter er organismer som gjennom sin blotte eksistens signaliserer noe livskraftig og syklisk. Gresset under føttene, sivet vi kan vasse gjennom til midjen, kornet som gir næring, blomsten vi blåser på, og det sinnrike artsmangfoldet, der det svaier under vår tyngde. Ugresset kommer dårligst ut i planteverden, og representerer et forsøk på å lage vanntette skott mellom natur og kultur, det ville og det kultiverte. Retorikken rundt ugresset knytter det metaforisk til ideologi, det omtales som en inntrenger – en immigrant som truer rasjonell produktivitet. Altså, en laber størrelse på et moralsk barometer, up to no good. Saboterer det med overlegg funksjonalitet og produktivitet? Med sin antisosiale vekst undergraver ugresset dominerende kollektive og økonomiske prinsipper. Ugresset er ustyrlige planter på feil sted. Derfor bør det røskes vekk. Ugressarkivet aktivert Emil Korsmos ugressarkiv fremstår som en levning fra fortiden som i dag stort sett er glemt – en samling full av interne irrganger og paradokser. De en gang så rene vitenskapelige idealer er overrislet av personlige spor; tett håndskrift, arkaiske betraktninger og visuelle fortellinger Nasjonsbyggingen og den nøkterne norske bondekulturen meisles ut – alle hadde rett til jorden. Korsmo var opptatt av den nasjonale og internasjonale samfunnsdebatten; pågående industrialisering, sosiale problemer og prekær hungersnød. Som selvlært forsker var han representant for en opplysningstankegang, blikket var festet på forbedring. Kampen mot ugresset skulle optimalisere og effektivisere avlingene. Arkivet rommer aparte bilder hvor herrer utstyrt med cyanamid sprøyter åkeren iført hatt og frakk, fjernt fra vår tids mer industrielle fremgangsmåter. Miljøødeleggelsene hadde ennå ingen klar kontur. Dette arkivet gir et tidsbilde – mellomkrigsårene sett gjennom et filter av grønne vekster og såfrø. Den konserverte naturen i Korsmos arkiv er også preget, falmet og gulnet, systematisk holdt fast i herbarier og plansjer, noen røtter er også lagt på sprit. Den nitide innsamlingen av planter, røtter og frø, og formidlingen i form av bøker og grafiske illustrasjoner (av kunstmaleren Knut Quelprud og tegneren Sara Mørk), bærer preg av en stor nysgjerrighet og konsentrasjon. Korsmo syntes å være nesten omsorgsfullt viet til det han ville utrydde, i hele 25 år arbeidet han intenst med sitt plansjeverk. Visualiseringen av ugresset som «fiende» gjør det til en insisterende og betydningsfull størrelse. Kristin Tårnesvik og Espen Sommer Eide spinner nesten hundre år etter videre på denne helt spesifikke arven, men foretar en nylesning. Korsmos ugressekspertise utgjør et uforpliktende historisk bakteppe, som de

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forholder seg både ydmyke og lekende til. De griper med stor frihet fatt i de performative mulighetene i arkivets narrativ – systematikkens blinde og poetiske punkter. Deres prosjekt kan sies å handle om forflytning av former og ideer, inn i stuntpregede performancer og atmosfæriske installasjoner. Det opprinnelige arkivet plukkes fra hverandre, vises i ofte ubegripelige bruddstykker, og pendler hele tiden mellom samling og oppløsning. Kontroll og oversikt, som styrte Korsmos prosjekt, er vendt på hodet. Tårnesvik/Sommer Eide styrer heller rett mot ugressets mangel på konstruktiv logikk innen et system. Eksperimentet danner hovedfortellingen, med mange mulige flokete tråder og forgreininger. Arbeidene vokser oppå hverandre, og avler stadig nye konstellasjoner. I utstillingen på Entrée samles mange av duoens tidligere prosjekter innen en intim og mørklagt romlighet. Ulike forsøk med arkivets objekter er filmet og projisert på hengende papir. Papiret er i bevegelse, det skjelver og klaprer ved hjelp av små maskiner montert på underkanten, akkompagnert av et assosiasjonsrikt lydbilde. På en svartmalt vegg vises flimrende små blokker som svever i et tomt og uendelig rom, som små tapte romskip i universet. Firkantene er egentlig trykkeplater (klisjéer) fra 30-tallet, som ble benyttet i trykkingen av Korsmos lærebøker og plansjer. Melankolien som oppstår er ambivalent – mellom informasjon og absolutt avkoblethet, jordtung fortid og leviterende teknologi i en eller annen fjern fremtid. På lignende måte ble trykkeplatene uttrykk for noe annet enn seg selv i den første performancen Tårnesvik/Sommer Eide presenterte fra prosjektet – Systematismens 1. borg. Improvisert musikk ledsaget trykkeplater som ble stilt på høykant, og skjørheten i komposisjonen gjorde performancen til en opplevelse med en kalkulert risiko for kollaps. Den grafiske trykkeprosessen har fått en prominent rolle i utstillingen. Tårnesvik/Sommer Eide har, ved hjelp av pensjonerte entusiaster ved et teknisk museum og en gammel tysk trykkemaskin, gjort nye trykk av disse originale trykkeplatene, eller klisjeene, fra arkivet. Bilder, grafer og figurer, blant annet med opplysninger om priser på hvete, rug og bygg fra rundt 1916 og eiendomsprisens bevegelse, stilles ut som grafiske kunstverk, som en helt konkret måte å gjenopplive døende arkivmateriale på. Sannsynligvis vil klisjeene være helt tapt om noen år, siden metallet i dem eroderes når korrekt oppbevaring ikke prioriteres. Tilfeldigheter oppstår i den manuelle trykkingen, og den fikserte historien gjentas ikke komplett mekanisk, men avviker hele tiden fra seg selv – i en uforutsigbar rytme. Notater på avstand I utstillingen kan man også høre et diktafonopptak hvor kunstnerne leser opp dokumenter fra arkivet – brevkorrepondanse og daterte notater om slikt som hungersnød i Europa, ymse foredrag på universitetet i Oslo, kamp mot potetkreft og konspiratorisk ugress i Kaukasus. Det er ingen klar sammenheng mellom disse beretningene, men Tårnesvik/Sommer Eide stiller spørsmål ved statusen til arkivobjekter hvis detaljerte utlegninger ikke anses som sentrale for nasjonens symbolske identitet. Opptegnelsene holdes her levende, på en hemmelighetsfull måte, som om de rommer mer

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avanserte mønstre og verdifulle opplysninger enn det som her når øret. De er overleveringer fra en annen tid, hvor dette fremsto som betydningsfullt for noen. Stemmenes nærvær er hektet løs fra et reelt nærvær, de synes spektrale og tidløse. Flere av duoens performancer fokuserer også på den tekstuelle overleveringen, og hvordan disse fungerer utover det informative. Tidsdimensjonen definerer arbeidet A book of time, hvor vi i den filmede dokumentasjonen kan se en hånd som sakte blar gjennom sidene i en gammel bok. Denne browsingen synes både konsentrert og adspredt, og vi kan høre den knitrende lyden av papirets tynne sprøhet som settes i bevegelse. Først er sidene blanke, deretter tettskrevne med gammeldags snirklete håndskrift. Hånden holder et jevnt tempo, og stopper ikke opp, den holder seg på overflaten av skriften. Kulturarven representert av skriftkulturen registreres og løftes respektfullt frem, men studeres ikke i dybden. Kunnskapen forblir i et annet tidslag. Fremfor en akademisk analyse av skriften som innholdsformidler velger Tårnesvik/Sommer Eide seg en mer intuitiv inngang. De leker med det manuelle arbeidet som fenomen, og det får lov til å hvile i fortiden. Videoens utsnitt er på den aktive og nennsomme hånden alene, fritatt en større kontekst. Den rolige tilstedeværelsen i øyeblikket, i kommunikasjon med en bok, blir det sentrale. Denne basale, uspesifikke kontakten løper som en strøm gjennom samtlige arbeider vist på Entrée.

Alliert med ugresset Tårnesvik/Sommer Eides eksperimentelle tilnærming til arkivsamlingen tematiserer ugress i en videre forstand. Arbeidene er ikke ute etter en essens eller noe formålstjenlig, men åpner opp for et vagere spillerom som opptrer gjennom mange lag. Det oppstår en sanselighet i uventede materialmøter, ofte med en type spissfindig humor. De har selv omtalt sin form som et slags objektteater, små forestillinger som spiller seg selv kontinuerlig. Arkivet behandles ikke musealt, men blir en ramme for en sammensatt opplevelse, som både tangerer økologi og surrealisme, men som først og fremst er uvillig til å definere seg selv. Ugresset blir her til noe helt annet enn et endimensjonalt fiendebilde, det blir et symbol på alt det vi ikke vet. Det som ikke hører hjemme noe sted. I dette ligger en anerkjennelse av en mulig avansert følsomhet, som inntil videre ikke er synlig for oss. Ved å mime vitenskapelige undersøkelser, og flørte nostalgisk med fortiden, tillegges disse tilforlatelige objektene en betydning som lader dem, men meningen og resultatet er utsatt på ubestemt tid. Estetikkens skjøre og forsiktige uttrykk harmonerer med frøsamlerens strategi; noe samles inn og bevares for en uklar fremtid, hvor frøet kanskje vil bli ekstra viktig. I Tårnesvik/Sommer Eides eksperimenter, som ikke er bundet opp til regulerte former, kan man se det helt unyttige og tidkrevende som en hyllest til Korsmo, som viet livet sitt til ugress. Herbariet behandles som et slags familiealbum for plantene, med mange ulike skudd, tatt ut av sin historiske plassering, og dermed poetisk frigjort. Denne transformasjonen av opprinnelig form og bruk muliggjør

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en meditativ og sansende tilnærming til naturen. Dermed skapes et åpent rom, som kan hende er mørklagt, men som innbyr til en særegen fornemmelse – en sansning som vanskelig lar seg identifisere. Som formulert i Tårnesvik/Sommer Eides hørespill A Trial of Weeds, et rettsalsdrama i tre akter, til ugressets forsvar: I must remind you that the most profound pleasure received from weeds lies in the whispering or clashing of the leaves, which is one pleasure by day, and quite another by night.

Espen Sommer Eide, Kristin Tårnesvik Archival material from Korsmo’s Weed Archive 2014

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Å ta tingene på alvor Espen Søbye

I et innbundet eksemplar av tabellene fra folketellingen i 1835, utarbeidet i det kongelige finans-, handels- og tolldepartmentet, fins det noen svært interessante håndskrevne bemerkninger. Dette var første gangen resultatene av en folketelling ble offentliggjort og publikasjonen var den første i en rekke med det lange navnet «Statistiske Tabeller over Kongeriget Norge, utgivne efter det Kongelige Finants-, Handels- og Told-Departementets Foranstaltning, Første Række, indeholdende Tabeller over Folkemængden i Norge den 29de November 1835.» Heftet var trykket hos Chr. Grøndahl i 1838. Med penn er det skrevet «Innbundet til Oslo Kommunes statistiske kontors bibliotek for kr. 9,14 pr. 9/6–1952 af Fredriksens bokbinderi.» Det blågrå pappomslaget som trykkeriet la om materien, er bundet inn og har fungert som permer før sommeren 1952. De første sidene er stemplet «Kristiania Kommunes Statistiske Kontor», «Oslo kommunale statistiske kontor» og «Oslo kommunes statistiske kontor, Biblioteket». Under stempelet «Oslo kommunale statistiske kontor» er det skrevet 1935 med blyant og over står det 313.13(31) S79. Ettersom publikasjonen også er påført stemplet «Kristiania Kommunes Statistiske Kontor» må publikasjonen ha tilhørt kontoret også før 1925. Tallet 1935 under stempelet er høyst sannsynlig et årstall som kan bety at det var dette året publikasjonen ble klassifisert etter Deweys desimalklassifikasjonssystem. Nummeret over stempelet, 313.13(31) S79, er et klassifikasjonsnummer etter et system som ble utviklet av Melvil Dewey i 1876. I 1935 var det den 13. versjonen av klassifikasjonssystemet fra 1932 som ble brukt. Dewey klassifikasjon ble introdusert i Norge av Haakon Nyhuus før første verdenskrig. Med blyant er denne publikasjonen påført også et annet nummer, «L.nr.18». Det står antakelig for løpenummer 18 og viser kanskje til et tidligere nummersystem som var laget for å holde orden på kontorets boksamling. Det er ikke godt å vite hva det betyr at publikasjonen har et så lavt løpenummer. Betyr det at heftet var den attende som ble anskaffet til boksamlingen? Sannsynligvis har det eksistert en protokoll ved boksamlingen, i den ble publikasjonens tittel skrevet ut for løpenummeret og muligens hvordan publikasjonen ble skaffet til veie. Det er også en grei måte å holde orden på hvor mange bøker boksamlingen har bestått av. Publikasjonen er påført et tredje nummer, 685, to steder, både utenpå det blågrå opprinnelige omslaget med rød fettstift, og etterpå «ln.» som mest sannsynlig også står for løpenummer. det er også påført med blyant under årstallet 1935. Det fins også en annen innbundet statistikkpublikasjon, «Tabeller

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vedkommende Folketellingerne i Aarene 1801 og 1825, udgiven af departementet for det Indre» med interessante innførsler. I denne er det skrevet med rødt blekk på tittelsiden «Et tidl. ekspl. Stjålet pr 1⁄4—1949. Nytt ekspl. mottatt som gave av Stat. Sentralbyrå pr. 1/7—1949.» På den blanke siden foran er det skrevet med rødt blekk «Innb. til Oslo kommunes statistiske kontors bibliotek pr. 3/11—1955 for kr. 15,50 af Fredriksens bokbinderi, (Liste fra S Martinsen av 25/5—1955).» Det har altså vært et heftet eksemplar biblioteket ved Oslo kommunes statistiske kontor mottok fra Statistiske sentralbyrås publikasjonslager. Denne publikasjonen er påført det samme Dewey klassifikasjonsnummeret, 313.13(31) S79, men også et nummer 4369 og 8. Det ligger nær å anta at tallet 8 svarere til det ene løpenummersystemet der publikasjonen fra 1838 hadde nummer 12 og at nummeret 4369 svarer til det andre løpenummeret der den forrige publikasjonen hadde nummer 685. Kanskje viser de lave løpenumrene til undergruppe for norsk statistikk, mens de høye numrene da muligens viser til det totale antallet bøker ved biblioteket. I så fall betyr det at da Oslo kommunes statistiske bibliotek sommeren 1949 mottok eksemplaret som erstattet det stjålne eksemplaret av tabellene fra folketellingene i 1801 og 1825 besto biblioteket av 4359 bind eller om lag 87 hyllemeter. Det kan tenkes at de lave løpenumrene svarer til statistikkpublikasjoner etter hvilket år de omhandler, og at der er grunnen til publikasjonen trykket i 1874 med tabeller fra 1801 har et lavere løpenummer enn publikasjonen fra 1838 med tall fra 1835. I denne siste publikasjonen ligger det en lapp datert 26/1—79, under datoen er det en signatur som det er vanskelig å lese, deretter står det: «F.m. i Christiania 1825 : 19 061. Må rettes i Årb. f. Oslo, tab. 2.1» Altså Folkemengden i Christiania for 1825 må rettes i tabell 2.1 i Statistisk årbok for Oslo. Lappen ligger mellom side 72 og 73 som viser en tabell over folketallet i byene etter kjønn og alder i 1825, og dokumenterer at erstatningspublikasjonen ble brukt for å rette et tall i Statistiske årbok for Oslo så seint som i 1979. Etter at Oslo kommunes statistiske kontor ble omorganisert, underlagt Utviklings- og kompetanseetaten og flyttet fra rådhuset til Strømsveien 102 på Etterstad, ble også statistikkkontorets bibliotek nedlagt. En del av de eldste publikasjonene ble da overført til Statistisk sentralbyrås bibliotek. I de siste par årene har også Statistisk sentralbyrås bibliotek vært under avvikling, og de to innbundne publikasjonene fra 1838 og 1874 skulle kasseres. Ordet arkiv er avledet av den greske betegnelsen for et hus der det ble oppbevart offentlige dokumenter. Disse dokumentene ble skapt av eller ble sendt inn til den offentlige instansen som en del av dennes virksomhet. Dokumentene i slike arkiv var unike. Med et arkiv forstår vi gjerne de delene av institusjoners og etaters arkiver som er overført til Riksarkivet eller Statsarkivene. Altså arkiver fra nedlagte institusjoner, eller de delene av arkivene til eksisterende instanser som er så gamle at det ikke lenger er behov for dem i det daglige arbeidet.

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Det som skiller et arkiv fra et bibliotek er at arkivet består av unike dokumenter mens biblioteket består av bøker, tidsskrifter og aviser som er mangfoldiggjorte. Tidligere var et unikt dokument det samme som et håndskrevet dokument. Kravet om at dokumentet skal være unikt, gjør at arkivet har en likhet med kunstverket. Videre er et arkiv som består av unike dokumenter et redskap for å erkjenne og å forstå. Det skjer ikke bare ved at dokumentene er unike, men gjennom dokumentenes proveniens eller historie, hvorfor ble dokumentet til, hvem var det ment for, hvordan det er blitt tatt vare på og så videre. Slike spørsmål kan stilles til en hvilken som helst gjenstand, for eksempler til bøker fra et nedlagt bibliotek. Nå kan det argumenteres for at disse gjennom påskrifter allerede utgjør unike objekter, men i alle fall blir de det i den grad det er mulig å rekonstruere disse publikasjonenes historie, og det er nesten alltid mulig. Dette betyr at arkiv ikke lengere er betegnelse på et sted for unike dokumenter, men en måte å forholde seg til gjenstander på. Arkiv blir ikke lenger et sted, men en relasjon og en metode. Hva er det som gjør tingene unike? Det er sporene etter mennesker. Håndskriften i de to publikasjonene er den samme, det vil antakelig være mulig å finne ut hvem denne bibliotekaren var ved å gå til arkivene etter Oslo kommunes statistiske kontor. Kanskje er det også bevart en søknadsprotokoll for biblioteket så det går an å finne ut hvem besøkte biblioteket i april 1949 og som kan ha stjålet publikasjonen. Den for oss ukjente bibliotekarens handling, at hun tok kontakt med Statistisk sentralbyrå for å få erstattet publikasjonen, er en vakker handling. Ingen hadde bedt henne om å gjøre det, hun mente at biblioteket ikke var komplett på dette området uten denne publikasjonen og forsøkte og skaffe et nytt eksemplar og klarte det ved utvist velvillighet fra publikasjonslageret til Statistisk sentralbyrå. For at publikasjonen skulle tåle bruk og utlån ble denne også sendt til Fredriksens bokbinderi, riktignok først seks år etter at den ble mottatt, høsten 1955. Slike spor på tingene gjør dem unike, men ikke bare det, det er på grunn av disse påskriftene som forteller oss om holdninger og handlinger, at verden er blitt til. Unike gjenstander er hukommelse, vår hukommelse om dette. Å ta ting på alvor er å behandle dem som unike objekter.

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Espen Sommer Eide, Kristin TĂĽrnesvik Archival material from Korsmoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Weed Archive 2014

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Terence Koh performance on opening night of sticks, stones and bones March 14, 2014

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Terence Koh Lighthouse sculpture Wood, glass, moving lightbulb, concrete base 2014

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Installation view from EntrĂŠe and Tag Team Studio 2014

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Terence Koh performance onboard the boat operated by Kjetil FrĂ¸ysaa. 2014

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Magisk realistiske avsløringer Julie Lillelien Porter

Den kanadisk-kinesiske kunstneren Terence Kohs første separatutstilling i Norge tar utgangspunkt i reisebrevet. Den fysiske reisen står sentralt i utstillingen, der strekningene man må tilbakelegge for å se de ulike delene, spiller en sentral rolle. En av erfaringene Koh gjorde seg på sin befaring (reise) i Bergen før utstillingen, var at både Tag Team og Entrée ligger rett ved sjøen, på ulike sider av byen. Båtturen mellom de to visningsstedene er én av seks komponenter som sammen med en performance, to installasjoner, en skulptur i offentlig rom og en bok, utgjør «sticks, stones and bones». Dette er første gangen Koh forener farger, ubehandlet treverk og stein i installasjonene sine, et ganske klart avvik fra hans tidligere, monokrome signaturstil. For min del begynte utstillingen på Festplassen i Bergen. En tykk trestamme – som senere viser seg å være restene av fjorårets norske juletregave til Newcastle i England – er plassert på et betongpodium med hvitt led-lys i toppen. Midt på dagen i solskinn er lyset usynlig, en manifestasjon av den motsetningsfulle poesien som preger utstillingen som helhet. Går man videre til Entrée, må man finne seg i å bli stående på utsiden av galleriet og se inn på en enorm haug med vedkubber som stenger for inngangsdøren. I en plastlomme på døren henger tegnede kart i postkortstørrelse med informasjon om avgangstidene for båtturen fra kaien. Entrée ligger midt i et av områdene med størst gentrifiseringspress, som per dags dato er et virrvarr av et Schengen-byråkratisert havneområde (med hyggelig venteplass for Askøyfergen), underjordisk parkeringshus, verneverdig trehusbebyggelse og gjennomgangstrafikk. I sammenheng med de narrativene som springer ut fra utstillingens ulike komponenter, føles det helt naturlig å skride ned en rusten metallstige på steinbryggen i upraktiske pumps og sette seg i en åpen båt midt i et urbant landskap. Båten kjører ut fra Hurtigrutekaien, rundt Nøstet og Jekteviken, inn Puddefjorden og til slutt Store Lungegårdsvannet. Jeg blir flau av begeistring over den vakre og ramponerte topografien som man kan skue på alle kanter under båtturen. Tiden blir så synlig. Alle vet at en fysisk reise følges av en mental reise, og da båten ankommer Tag Team Studio, bekreftes denne vissheten av en steinvegg som viser seg å være laget av dynamittsprengte megablokker fra byggingen av nye Ikea i Åsane.

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Overskridelsesaspektet i den flere tonn tunge installasjonen føles vemodig. Den forskjøvne navigeringen som oppstår når man er på et ukjent sted, finner man også i boken som er utgitt i forbindelse med utstillingen. Den har tittelen blindhet og lys og ser innholdsløs ut ved første øyekast. Kun ved nærmere granskning ser man de vage bildene av stjernekart, som kun kan sees ordentlig i et mørklagt rom. På sensitivt vis konstruerer Koh en oppdagelsesferd der betrakterens persepsjon og bevegelse igangsetter en parallell kartlegging av reisen.

Publisert for første gang 15. mai, 2014 i Billedkunst.

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These are 3D scans of marble columns from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. The 3D models can be downloaded from Yuanmingyuan3d.com, and used without copyright restrictions.

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Oliver Laric Yuanmingyuan Columns 3D printed in white plaster on MDF plinth Installation view at EntrĂŠe 2014

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Marit FĂ¸lstad Sense of Doubt Videostills, 2-Channel video installation 2014

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Marit FĂ¸lstad Installation view 2014

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Marit FĂ¸lstad Revolution Neon and plywood 2014

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On Marit Følstad’s Sense of Doubt Steinar Sekkingstad

Marit Følstad’s exhibition Sense of Doubt transforms the normally open, brightly-lit gallery of Entrée, with its characteristic view of the street from large windows, into an enclosed, evocative, dark, intense world cut off from life outside. The exhibition establishes a clear dividing-line between inside and outside as you step into a world totally enveloped in its own atmosphere. The concept ‘immersive’ is frequently used in English of installations where you are completely surrounded by the artwork. In Norwegian we lack a concept that similarly covers this particular type of experience. The concept is also used in VR computer technology, for example in a computer game where you find yourself ‘inside’ a game universe, and where the players experience that the simulated world is so perceptually convincing that they ‘are really there’, as part of the world of the game. The word ‘immersion’ also has a number of other layers associated with the feeling of sinking into something – literally (as in water in some kinds of Baptism), or metaphorically, into a state of mental absorption or deep involvement in some activity or thought (‘a state of total immersion’). Følstad often uses video in combination with other media to stage this kind of enveloping exhibition universe. Sense of Doubt consists of two new video productions and a neon and plywood installation. The two videos are distributed over four different monitors, embedded in specially built architectural modules that extend from floor to ceiling. The only light in the room comes from the dimly glowing video screens, and from the coloured neon text. The ever-changing light and the instrumental soundtrack fill the space and contribute to the experience of ‘stepping into’ the artwork. All the same, there is also something about Følstad’s videos in themselves, independent of the form of presentation, that produces this experience of immersion. The people in Følstad’s videos seem to be caught in a state of inner contemplation, entirely absorbed in themselves, despite the physical actions to which they are often subjected. In the video that shares its title with the exhibition, Sense of Doubt, the figure on the screen is quite literally surrounded by (or immersed in) white smoke (CO2 gas) which repeatedly billows into the picture and almost obliterates the person. In Moss Garden one of the screens is filled with incandescent explosions that start at the centre of the picture and expand directly towards us. Sparks flare up and die out in an infinity of beautiful explosions, set against a bottomless black background. Presumably we are seeing a relatively primitive firework display, but the black background gives the shower of sparks associations with astronomical phenomena, like the images from space we know from the Hubble telescope. Photographs from this

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telescope, which was sent out into space by nasa in 1990, often show impressively distinct images of celestial bodies, supernovas and black holes. On the other channel of the video we see the back of the head of someone standing still and looking out at the explosions streaming directly towards her. Like Caspar David Friedrich’s wanderer, in his painting from 1818, standing with his back to us, overlooking a foggy landscape as threatening as it is overwhelmingly beautiful, Følstad’s figure too stands so to speak alone in the universe. As in the visual art of Romanticism, the sublime experience of nature first and foremost evokes a state of calm and inner contemplation. From our position as viewers of the video, the head of the person on the screen gets in the way of the ‘action’. We are excluded from the spectacular and instead remain standing, looking at the back of the quite static head. The head seems to float bodilessly in space, and the long straight hair takes on an abstract quality like something almost eerily indefinable. Against the dark background, the head becomes as weightless as the shower of sparks, and looks most of all like a dark, floating celestial body that obscures the explosions coming towards us. In astro nomy the concept of immersion, aptly enough, is used to describe a phenomenon where one celestial body disappears behind or into the shadow of another.

Ambient visuality The two videos have clear resemblances to Følstad’s earlier works. Most of the videos feature a staged action where one person (usually Følstad herself) performs or is subjected to an action. In a few works the person herself performs an active, confrontational action, but in several of the videos of the past few years the person more usually stands quite still. She stands with a fixed, focused gaze as if frozen, apparently unaffected by the fact that the face or body is physically confronted by something originating outside the picture. In New Dawn Fades (2010) the face is struck with great force by a black sphere. In Everything Merges With the Night (2010) a similar sphere, filled with water, bursts over her head. Both of these films were shot using high-speed photography producing extreme slow motion, so that the actions are drawn out in time, giving an almost hyper-realistic clarity in each video frame. The similarities among the various videos mean that they can be understood as parts of the same overall project. Følstad’s oeuvre emerges as a series of overlapping works where it is sometimes unclear where one work ends and the next begins. A recurring formal vocabulary with related references is repeated in work after work, without emptying the repetitions of meaning or enigmatic power. The effect of this continuity is that one work informs the next in a constantly accumulating series of interrelated works. All the films deploy a similar stylistic formula. A camera is set up statically and shows exactly the same segment throughout the film. The person in front of the camera is meticulously positioned in the frame,

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against a neutral background. Each of the videos appears to consist of one continuous shot, without perceptible cuts or edits. The strict set-up recalls research documentation or a ‘screen test’ of an actor being auditioned. The aesthetic expression in Følstad’s videos is nevertheless a long way from such sober, documentary expression. This has to do with the distinctive staging of the individual events played out in front of the camera. The videos have more in common with Surrealism’s filmic universe than with the aesthetics of documentary video art. Følstad dwells on the purely formal in the action that unfolds in front of the camera. The videos are spectacularly beautiful in their painstakingly detailed studies, in which Følstad abstracts and aestheticizes the action so that even the most banal event rises to a dramatic climax. In several of the latest works, the confrontational, active subject of many of Følstad’s early videos has become a sculptural body; a malleable material which in the film frame fulfils the same function as the other pliant, fluid and ‘formless’ elements she uses. Like a sculptor with time as her material, she uses her camera to capture the formal qualities of small, fleeting moments – and amorphous materials like smoke, water or fire – phenomena that cannot otherwise be formed or fixed in a static, solid structure. The hair that ripples in slow motion as Følstad gives a dramatic toss of her head, repeating the same motion with tiny variations in an endless loop across three different screens (Something in the Way, 2012), has the same fluid, amorphous quality as the cigarette smoke that the male character in another work inhales and exhales with determined intensity (With The Lights Out, 2008). In other videos it is water or fire that fills the screen with similar organic forms that dissolve and vanish just as quickly as they arise. The soundtrack for Følstad’s new videos has been composed by Svarte Greiner (Erik K Skodvin) and consists of a sound-universe that is just as fluid as the action in the videos.1 Although there is a certain amount of linear development in the music, a compositional form with a progression from a starting point to an ending, this is still music where you first and foremost find yourself inside a universe of sound. The ambient sound fills the space just as structurelessly as the thick smoke in Sense of Doubt. Ambient sound fulfils the same space-defining and enveloping functions as ‘immersive’ installation art. In the article ‘Ambient / Ambivalent’ the art historian Ina Blom compares the spatial paradigm of contemporary art to ambient music: designed to operate in the nexus between musical sound and environ mental noise, ambient music shares with contemporary art precisely its interest in the exploration of the real, actual spaces in which we live and move about. 2

Svarte Greiner’s music is situated precisely in such a compositional trad ition, where the music creates space more than it is perceived as linear development.

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Once more this spatial paradigm can be applied to Følstad’s videos in themselves. They exist in what could perhaps be called an ambient visuality, where the action on the screen appears at once static and in continuous organic transformation. This ambient quality is particularly palpable in the videos that are based on slow-motion film and repetitions, or in the films where the main character is absent and the camera dwells exclusively on the mutable and uncontrollable forms that grow forth more or less by themselves. The firework-like explosions in Moss Garden have a parallel in an earlier work, the captivatingly beautiful video Disorder (2013), where lambent flames flicker across the screen as an indefinable, evidently easily combustible material flares up and flames across the black background only to die out. Følstad’s videos seem to establish a set of actions where the uncontrollable and the organically mutable define the form of the work.

The gaze turned outward The contemplative atmosphere in Følstad’s exhibition seems to envelop the installation, sequestering the universe the artist creates in the exhibition space. But there are a few hints that point outward, to a world outside the work – among other places in the titles of the works and in the luminous neon work revolution, where language opens up a network of references to external factors. The titles Sense of Doubt and Moss Garden are both borrowed from David Bowie, and are the names of two striking tracks from Bowie’s album ‘Heroes’. Within the dramatic structure of the LP, these two tracks, along with Neuköln, form a continuous instrumental suite on the B-side of the record. ‘Heroes’ is the midmost album in the so-called Berlin trilogy, on which Bowie worked closely with Brian Eno in the period 1977—1979 (‘Low’ [1977], ‘Heroes’ [1977] and ‘Lodger’ [1979]). The two tracks to which Følstad refers can hardly be experienced in isolation from this larger contextual whole. That Følstad chooses two tracks from the same album indicates that the videos in the exhibition are two parts of the same work, in the same way as the songs on Bowie’s LP. Perhaps the way each track on a Bowie album always forms part of an overall unity can be compared to the way the individual video work by Følstad is related not only to the rest of the exhibition, but also to the way it forms part of the overall superstructure of the artist’s oeuvre. Sense of Doubt and Moss Garden are both two-part videos, and like the three-part suite on ‘Heroes’ are compositions that are both fragmented and parts of a larger whole. 3 Through the titles Følstad brings this whole Bowie universe to a reading of the exhibition. Once the connection has been made, it is not difficult to find a certain aesthetic affinity between Følstad’s works and Bowie’s Berlin period. The connection ‘fits’ in ways that are not necessarily fully articulated or explicitly formulated, but the Bowie universe and the Følstad universe strike one as a good match. Some pieces fall into place as Følstad’s filmatic universe engages in dialogue with the cool, dark, slightly futuristic atmosphere that suffuses Bowie’s three Berlin albums. In a book about

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Brian Eno the music scholar Eric Tamm describes Eno’s crucial role in the work with ‘Heroes’. Tamm calls Sense of Doubt a horrific, minimalistic soundscape with a deep, slow C-B-Bb-A piano motive that keeps returning, under filtered white-noise swooshings and isolated synthesizer chords in A minor, punctuated occasionally by an evil grating sound that can only be described as the yawn of the dead. 4

That such a ‘horrific, minimalistic soundscape’ could have functioned as inspiration for Følstad’s exhibition seems a reasonable assumption. David Bowie also appears as a reference in titles of earlier works. He finds himself in the company of artists like Joy Division, Brian Eno, Roxy Music, Nirvana or Blonde Redhead, all artists from whom Følstad has borrowed titles. Følstad’s choices of titles are open-ended enough to offer ample room for interpretation, even without knowing the pop music reference. With the Bowie reference, though, we can talk about the appropriation of a shared pop-cultural heritage. Once ‘Heroes’ is involved in the exhibition, associations come rolling in for many of us: Bowie, Eno, Berlin, Tony Visconti, Iggy Pop, drug problems, the late 1970s, the Cold War etc. Any reference to this period in Bowie’s career will carry with it a whole set of consequent associations.5 And so an intertextual network of references arises, both among Følstad’s own works, and with the broader pop-cultural landscape in which they are placed. The interesting thing about Følstad’s use of quotations is nevertheless that the titles lie ‘alongside’ the work. The reference does not really give us a key that can decode the ‘meaning’ of the work. The exhibition is not about Bowie or Berlin in the 1970s, yet it adds an associative component that remains as a resonance for the work and plays into the experience.

Mourning a lost future The last work in the exhibition is a text-based piece where the word revolution fills the space with cool, shimmering neon light. The glowing letters switch off and on in a particular cycle, changing the text over time. First revolution, which then changes to evolution, then revolt and finally ruin. In all its simplicity, consisting of a single word which through a negative elimination of letters changes into several new words, this work is both a piece of concrete poetry and a compressed narrative, where the series of highly charged concepts together make up an overall sweep of action. The first two words involve the avant-garde’s progressive belief in the future, the politically oppositional voice, faith in progress, development, upheaval and the hope for a new age. The third word, ‘revolt’, contains some of the same elements, but with a clearer anti-authoritarian attitude and implications of violent resistance against the establishment. Although the series of words runs in an endless loop, with no clear beginning or end, ‘ruin’ still seems to be the last word in this chain of concepts.

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The word implies decay and destruction, or the relics of a bygone era. Putting the words together in this way suggests a certain movement: from the dawning optimism and upheaval of revolution to destruction and ruin. The work thus also points to melancholy or powerlessness – the impossibility of revolutionary upheaval without subsequent destruction. The word ‘ruin’ also suggests a melancholy associated with the transience of all worldly things. Historic ruins manifest the perishability of the creations of mankind. Along with the title of the exhibition, ‘Sense of Doubt’, this movement from revolution to ruin paints a scenario full of doubt and ambivalence. The exhibition seems to evoke a vanished optimism about the future from a bygone time that now lies shrouded in a dark, obscure, misty mysticism. The concept of ‘hauntology’ describes the ghostlike presence of the past in the present. In the middle of the noughties the concept was adopted by a few music critics in an attempt to describe a tendency in British experimental pop music where this same ghost of the past – often an experience of superseded utopian revolutionary optimism – lies buried in a vague, introspective, crackly, scratchy soundscape based on nostalgic samples from the TV programmes, film music and radio plays of the sixties and seventies. 6 The exhibition ‘Sense of Doubt’ seems to have a similar ‘hauntological’ ambivalence. On the one hand Følstad evokes a period in the history of pop music typified by surplus and a revolutionary faith in artistic upheaval, 7 and on the other hand we find ourselves positioned with the disillusioned retrospective gaze of the present. David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ was created amidst the polarized political world-picture of the Cold War. Belief in revolution offered the hope that we could all be heroes. But for Bowie himself a doubt existed that balanced the optimism, as indicated by the deliberate use of quotation marks for the title and title track ‘Heroes’. Følstad’s exhibition contains both aspects: on the one hand the optimism of Moss Garden, with the character viewing the shooting star, like a Romantic wanderer on the way into the unknown; and on the other hand the figure that sinks into the fog, is swallowed up and obliterated. Above all, the exhibition expresses a melancholy in this tension between the belief in revolution – the moment when everything lies open (progress, upheaval, a better future) – and the certainty of the subsequent loss of the same possibilities. But this ambivalence also brings hope: a flashback to the moment when this faith was so strong also insists that the possibility still exists. Revolt. Revolution. Evolution.

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Footnotes

way our own time is haunted by historical memories. See for example Simon Reynolds, Retromania. Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its own Past, Faber and Faber, 2011, and Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, Zero Books, 2014.

1 Skodvin is a musician who works with sonori-

ties and the material and physical qualities of sound. The music he creates under names like Svarte Greiner and Deaf Center has a dark, lingering or so-called ‘filmatic’ character. 2 Ina Blom, ‘Ambient / Ambivalent: Researching

Sound and Vision’, in Daniel Birnbaum and John Peter Nilsson (eds.), Like Virginity, Once Lost: Five Views on Nordic Art Now, Propexus, 1999, p.87.

7 In their Berlin period at the end of the seven-

ties Bowie, Eno and Iggy Pop were a kind of veterans in a climate that was boiling over with aesthetic transgressions and artistic ambitions. After punk had begun to become formulaic around 1977 it was precisely the sombre proto-electronica of Bowie og Eno that was among the sources of inspiration for an explosion of creative DIY punk offshoots, from No Wave and electro-punk to industrial noise and minimalist hardcore punk.

3 Continuing to look for such parallels, one can

perhaps compare the group of works that Følstad has called ‘The Black Videos’ to the way a number of Bowie’s records from the end of the 1970s are often grouped together and associated with his ‘dark’ Berlin period. 4 Eric Tamm, Brian Eno and the Vertical Color

of Sound, Da Capo Press, 1995, p.158. 5 Bowie himself seems to relate actively to this

phenomenon on his last album ‘The Next Day’ (2013). Both on the cover, where the iconic ‘Heroes’ cover is used again (but this time with a large white square over the cover photograph), and in songs like Where Are We Now?, he looks back at his own Berlin period in the seventies. 6 The concept was frequently used from around

2005 by writers like Simon Reynolds and Mark Fisher. They borrowed it from Jacques Derrida’s book Spectres of Marx from 1994, and used it as a description of a loose network of mainly British artists, specifically associated with the recording label Ghost Box. Later the concept has spread among both music journalists and the art world, often as a term for the

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Terence Koh book signing at New York Art Book Fair 2014. Here with BjĂ¸rn-Henrik Lybeck.

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Mathijs van Geest A few things you should know about me. Appropriated doormat from the gallery hallway, clothe fabric under glass 2014

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Mathijs van Geest 0% Four empty boxes of Neutral washing powder from the collective laundry room in the apartment building on address Allegaten 14 in Bergen 2014

Mathijs van Geest Do you double about it? White circle applied on a jacket which is worn by a performer standing alone in the courtyard, dark-red circle on gallery window 2014

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BjĂ¸rn-Henrik Lybeck Copper Plates The copper plates have been buried in the ground for three months, exposing them to acidic soil and rainwater 2014

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Tora Endestad Bjørkheim Handwoven Canvas in Frame on Wheels Linen, wood, wheels 2014

Bjørn-Henrik Lybeck Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man Wood, glass, feather, seawater 2014

Tora Endestad Bjørkheim Hand Beaded Veil Glass beads, nylon 2014

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26 bits of text Mette Karlsvik On beans and beads

The wind is from west, and rain weaves works from water. Sheets of beaded moisture drift through air. In an atelier below the bridge hang beaded ribbons. A bridge of black pearls — now a subject of labour now a door of beads a port of pearls: a point in which spaces meet. Behind beads, backroom smells homely. Tora drinks black coffee. The acid works on teeth, skin, copper; etching surfaces, and writing the journey of the black, bitter bean. ii.

Bjørn-Henrik knows little about Tora’s work. Tora barely knows the work of Bjørn-Henrik. Their works work together. Tora says Work generates work. Labour is artwork. It takes no shortcuts. Bjørn-Henrik says Your questions work on my mind. My replies may be sketchy and not worked through. Please feel free to use my answers, and rework it to fit into your work. Bjørn-Henrik says But talk reduces work. Hence, dreams come at play. He has a recurring dream. He has a recurring image on his mind; a photograph returns to him/ he returns to the photo: Self-Portrait as a Drowned man is an image simultaneously bitter-sweet and dreamlike, says BjørnHenrik, and asks himself Are dreams the opposite of talk?

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He places two saws on a stone. The two saws directed towards the same spot, but with a slight difference in the angle in which they saw. The scores are close. Days pass. Scores deepen. The distance between the saw blades widens. Bjørn-Henrik buries copper in soil. He sculpts monuments from soil. Below backrooms and gallery spaces, in the dark and wet of the soil, copperplates rest; patiently waiting to be found, brushed, put on pedestals. Two copperplates resemble each other. After days in air and sunlight, they oxidize; exhibiting their different burials. A developed development; development in light following the development denied light: The copper photograph is a slow Daguerreotype depicting the nature of soil, and the action of acids, dung, minerals and microorganisms working on copper. Oceanic ground of Bygdøy, Oslofjord, is rich in calcium, potassium, limestone etc. Slowly, minerals are released from the ground, enriching the soil, and make the earth particularly fertile. From only traces of soil, birch trees stretch out, along the rocky shores of Lutvann. Their roots find their way down to fresh water. In fresh water, between hydrogen dioxide, their roots find pieces of nourishment, and an abundance of liquid and light. iii.

On shallow banks of lukewarm and calm sea, lives the Akoya oyster. Its pearl is said to have the most vivid colours. Its beauty is beyond shallowness. Ornaments, says Tora, Are like parasites: They cannot exist without the thing on which it sits.

The beads of Tora partake in the net of art, of artists, and audience: The meeting between art, artists and audience talking about art, Christmas celebration, the weather; on the wind and rain from west — working on the cobbled stones, west-coastal houses, walls. Ludwig Wittgenstein says Do not rest on success. It is like sleeping in the snow: you fall into a cold slumber, and die. Wittgenstein reworked: Work eternally! Wittgenstein says Eternal life is given to those living in the present. Wittgenstein reworked: Read ‘eternity’ as ‘timelessness’, not never-ending, and live forever, if living for the moment.

Work worked well. If sawing is dreaming, dreaming is like sawing. Dream saws dream. Saw saws Dream into half dreams. Half dreamt sleep is half a sleep. Sleep may be whole. It is an effort. The effort is paid back. After holistic sleep, Bjørn-Henrik opens clear blue eyes, says Actually, he says: What I said about reducing may be reductive. It may be too easy, he says: To claim that talk reduces labour, he says: Talk is limited. As much as art works on the mind, it should stimulate feelings, he says, and asks himself Why do I work conceptually? What I meant, says Bjørn-Henrik: Is that there are other issues to address too. Labour is not the only theme.

Tora says To do a good job to do a good job. A pissoir a pissoir a pissoir like un pipe est un pipe est un pipe, a rose a rose a rose a bead a bead a bead. Woven beads are the materialization of labour, a physical manifestation of repetition. Beadweaving takes on a life of its own. What is the language of textile? How do pearls speak? What is the narrative in the act of repeating the same action: the very precise, same action. How lives labour? What says work? How works work? What are the words of works, the sound of workish? Will work understand other languagues than workish. Does Work work works. Will Work understand workish? Workish works! And Work works well; alone working the Work. Work works with wool, with white, fine threads, weaving wonderful dreams where Work forgets about himself, dreams free from Work, waking up sweaty and worn out from all the dreamweaving. Working long days, wearing Work out. Work meets the wall, whine, and fall over, crawl below white bed linen, feeling only a fraction of the work that Work used to be – when

The day brakes. Sun enlightens copper plates; exposes them to reality, registers and preserves them. Life and death, existential issues, as well as the trivial and everyday, like breakfast, Bergen Tidende, black coffee, and then – off to work. Within the art-space, there is a space in which coffee is brewed. The room of art exhibits three pieces by Bjørn-Henrik and one piece by Tora. Between The Pieces of Art and the backroom there is a liquid portal of pearls. Black pearls marking the transition between The Art and the coffee. Coffee cools down. Wind increases. Bridges shiver. Tora walks on foot. 9 knots wind against her chest (even though the forecast says 10). The never-ending doubt in the mind of the artist: is the one piece of work sufficient or should she make a piece number two? And if she so does: can a piece number two meet the expectations – qualitatively is the quantity of pieces a point in itself the number of beads of repetitions?

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Lewis & Taggart Double Standard III 24 karat gold leaf on promotional material from Standard Gallery, Oslo 2014

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Lewis & Taggart Retail Sculpture Modified American Apparel paper bag, steel, aluminum, MDF, marble offcuts from a Dolce & Gabbana display 2014

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BjĂ¸rn Mortensen Elephant C-Print 2014

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BjĂ¸rn Mortensen Chair Oak, canvas and furniture screws 2014

BjĂ¸rn Mortensen Untitled Glazed ceramics 2014

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Cato LĂ¸land Untitled Silk, beetroot, air condition fan 2014

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Cato LĂ¸land VESSEL(S) # I

Cotton, chlorine, garment bag 2014

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The Artists’ Supper Club A collaborative project between Amber Ablett & Stacy Brafield

The Artists’ Supper Club organize events using the dinner table, food and taste as a focal point for exploring ideas and enabling critical but informal dialogue. Often taking place within exhibitions, they use the dining experience as a tool for discussion, by creating a comfortable, non-threatening and inclusive environment for people to spend a more intensive period of time to engage with and discuss the works in more depth. At Entrée The Artists’ Supper Club has taken place at three occasions, engaging with two exhibitions and once, in the empty white cube, they invited the participants to suggest topics for conversation and prepared corresponding dishes to introduce each participants ideas. At the exhibition of work by Tora Endestad Bjørkheim and Bjørn-Henrik Lybeck they took guests on a tour, focusing on six concepts central to the artists’ work. For example by taking a quote from the exhibition text, ‘Tora says Work generates work. Labor is artwork. It takes no shortcuts’, they asked each guest to open their own oysters (after watching a tutorial) to discuss how value of an object changes when labor and investment are added to it? Through this activity they were able to open up another understanding of Bjørkheim’s work which again sparked off further conversations about question of value within our own lives and society. The Artists’ Supper Club, a collaborative project between Amber Ablett & Stacy Brafield, aims to bring together people both inside and outside of the artworld to find new ways to talk about the things that art can provoke. The saying goes that you shouldn’t talk about religion and politics at the dinner table but they use food as a tool to explore and question, using the familiarity of the dinner table to extend the experience of the works, both for the audience and the artists.

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Artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Biographies

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Artists’ Biographies

Jørund Aase Falkenberg (b.1978, Stavanger, Norway) lives in Oslo. Working in the crossing point between concept/shape, reality/utopia and politics/ spirit, he engages in questions concerning mysticism, universal meaning and cultural change. After studying at Oslo Academy of Fine Art he has exhibited in venues such as The Young Artists Society, UKS, Oslo; Gallery F15, Tromsø Kunstforening; The Drawing Room, London, UK; The Nordic House, Reykjavik, Iceland and Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Norway. jorund.com Azar Alsharif (b.1984, Bushehr, Iran) lives and works in Bergen, Norway. She was educated at Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Solo exhibitions include; All these shimmering things. They fade so quick, Galerie SPZ, Prague, Czech Republic; The distant things seem close (…) the close remote (…) the air is loaded, Entrée, Bergen; Before You Can Read You Gotta Learn How To See, Galleri Fisk, Bergen; Knowledge Is Faithful, Rom 8, Bergen and 7 Sonnets On Grace, Hovefestivalen, Oslo. azaralsharif.com Rosa Barba (b.1972, Sicily, Italy) lives in Berlin. Barba studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Solo shows include Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK; musac, Castilla y Leon, Spain; Jeu de Paume, Paris, France; Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland. Barba’s work is represented in numerous international collections. rosabarba.com

Javier Barrios (b.1979, San Luis Potosi, Mexico) currently lives in New York. Barrios studied at the National Academy of Arts, Oslo, Norway and The School of Visual Arts, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Rod Bianco Gallery, Oslo, Norway; Akershus Kunstnersenter, Lillestrøm, Norway and Galerie Muelhaupt, Cologne, Germany. javierbarrios.com

Marco Bruzzone (b.1974, Genoa, Italy) lives in Berlin. He exhibits regularly in galleries, museums and participates in residency programs all around the world. Exhibitions include the venues Sprudel Spass & Wurst Tossing, Almanac projects, London, UK and Dingum, Berlin, Germany.

Randi Grov Berger (b.1982, Stord, Norway) is curator and founding director of Entrée (est. 2009) in Bergen. She has also worked for Performa Biennial, Printed Matter Inc. and koro. Education includes curatorial studies from Bergen Academy of Art and Design, and Art in Public Realm from Konstfack University. randigrovberger.com

Danilo Correale (b.1982, Naples, Italy) lives in New York, Naples and London. He has exhibited at 4th Moscow Biennial, Russia; Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Austria; Gallery Raucci Santamaria, Napels; Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain; 11th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey, Pistoletto Foundation, Biella, Italy; Entrée, Bergen; Madre Contemporary Art Museum, Napels and Kunstraum Lakeside, Klagenfurt, Austria.

Are Blytt (b.1981, Bergen, Norwzay) lives in Oslo. In 2008 he received his MA from the Art Academy in Trondheim. His work has been shown at various galleries and institutions, like Galleri K, Trafo Kunsthall, W17 / Kunstnernes Hus, 0047, NoPlace, and internationally venues like; The Agency Gallery, London, UK; kobe Biennale (2011), Japan; Platform Stockholm, Sweden and Galerie Perpétuel, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. areblytt.org

Espen Dietrichson (b.1976, Stavanger, Norway) currently lives in Oslo. He is educated from The Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo. Exhibitions include; Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand; Galerie Roger Tator, Lyon, France; Circulations-centralen, Malmö, Sweden; Vigelandsmuseet, Oslo; Bomuldsfabrikken Kunsthall, Arendal; Galerie Susan Nielsen, Paris and Jyvaskylä Art Museum, Finland. espendietrichson.com

Christian von Borries (b.1961, Germany) is an anti copyright activist, living in a green house in Berlin. He produces media from other media. He is a recognized orchestra conductor, composer and producer of site-specific psychogeographic projects. His work has been commissioned by Lucerne Festival, Kunstfest Weimar, Volksbuehne Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg and documenta 12 to mention a few. Recent projects include exhibitions at Central Asian Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale, Italy; Monday Begins on Saturday, Bergen Assembly, Norway, Werkleitz Biennale, Halle, Germany. masseundmacht.com soundcloud.com/masseundmacht/tracks the-dubai-in-me.com mocracy.info youtube.com/user/masseundmacht/

Leander Djønne (b.1981, Odda, Norway) lives in Oslo. His work deals with politics, capital, power relations and poetry. He is educated from Art Academy, Oslo; Bergen Academy of Art and Design; Staedelschüle Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Art Academy Malmö, Sweden and Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School, New Jersey. He has exhibited at Hannover Kunstverein, Germany; Bonniers Konsthall, Sweden; Astrup Fearnley, Oslo; El Parche, Colombia and UKS, Oslo. leanderdjonne.com Ida Ekblad (b.1980, Oslo, Norway) lives in Oslo. She is educated from Oslo National Academy of the Arts and Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles, California, US. She has had solo exhibitions at De Vleeshal, Middelburg,

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Netherlands; National Museum of Norway, Oslo; Karma International, Zurich, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland, Bergen Kunsthall, Norway and New Jerseyy, Basel, Switzerland. Her work has also been shown at The 54th Venice Biennale, Italy; Palais De Tokyo, Paris, France; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; New Museum, New York; Swiss Institute, New York; White Columns, New York and Art in General, New York. idaekblad.com Tora Endestad Bjørkheim (b.1986) is based in Bergen after completing her education at Bergen National Academy of Art and Design in 2013. She has exhibited at Entrée, Bergen; Kode Art Museums of Bergen; talente 2013 New Munich Trade Fair Center, Germany; Bergen Kunsthall, Norway and III Moscow Biennial for Young Art, Moscow, Russia. Together with Johnny Herbert, she is founder and editor of Grafters’ Quarterly, a free, Bergen-based newspaper and a forum for engaged attitudes. torabjorkheim.com Sammy Engramer (b.1968, Blois, France) lives in Tours, France. Influenced by the heroes of the famous and unfinished Gustave Flaubert book Bouvard and Pécuchet, Engramer learns different practices and tries to have a global experience. Exhibitions include; L’important c’est de participer; Le Bol Gallery, Orléans, France; European Think Tank, esa Gallery, Tourcoing, France and Objet du XXe, Claudine Papillon Gallery, Paris, France to mention a few. sammy.engramer.free.fr Serina Erfjord (b.1982, Erfjord, Norway) lives in Oslo, Norway. Her work is concerned with movement and materiality and how sculpture connects physically with the viewer; she introduces destabilizing kinetic elements to otherwise innocuous objects and arrangements. Her work has been shown at Entrée, Bergen; Small Projects, Tromsø; UKS, Oslo; Five thousand generations of birds,

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Fitjar; Electrohype, Malmö Konsthall and Ystad Konstmuseum Sweden. serinaerfjord.com Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena (b.1971, Montevideo, Uruguay) lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Stockholm, Sweden. He is educated from The Royal College of Art, Stockholm. Exhibitions include Delays and Revolutions, 50th Venice Biennial, Italy; My Private Heroes, marta Herford Museum, Germany; The Moderna Exhibition, Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Favored Nations, 5th Momentum Biennial, Moss, Norway; Biennial of The Americas (2010), Denver, Colorado, US and Outdoor Sculpture Triennial Prinzessinnengarten, Berlin, Germany. juan-pedro-fabra-guemberena.com Marit Følstad (b.1969, Tromsø) lives in Oslo. She is known for hyper-realistic and well-produced video works, minimalist neon works where text is the central element, and sound collaborations. She uses architectural interventions to create her unique universe in the exhibition context. The effect is hypnotic installations that challenge the viewer on multiple levels, as last seen at Entrée; Bergen; The Boiler Room, Oslo; lautom Contemporary, Oslo; Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø. folstad.net Kjersti Foyn (b.1985, Stavanger, Norway) lives and works in Bergen Norway. She is educated from Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts and Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Foyn is first and foremost a painter, and exhibitions include; Himmel, Blokk, Bergen; 65 malerier, Bergen Kjøtt, Bergen; un-homely, Tou Scene, Stavanger; Room with a sight/light, Galleri Blunk, Trondheim and What there is and what you see, Lights On, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo. kjerstifoyn.com Mathijs van Geest (b.1985 Leiden, Netherlands) is educated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design. In precise actions, he creates work based on

everyday objects, daily situations and the site specific. Much attention goes in examining the potential of these objects and how we interpret them. To transfer and create meaning by, for example, adding a lot or very little information in the titles and descriptions. You are invited as participant in the tension between the events of universal proportions and those of the small and mundane, revealing that the exceptional can be found in the common, as much as the common in the exceptional. Together with artist Bjørn Mortensen he runs the small publishing house, Apis Press. mathijsvangeest.nl apispress.no Pedro Gómez-Egaña (b.1976, Colombia) lives and work in Bergen, Norway and Copenhagen, Denmark. Educated from Goldsmiths College and Bergen National Academy of Arts and the Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Program. He works with sculpture, video, phonography, and site specific works that include a focus on motion and temporality. His work has been shown at Performa 13 Biennial, New York; Bergen Assembly; Lofoten International Art Festival; South Bank Centre, Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Kunstnernes Hus; OktoberDans, Bergen; Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen; Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin; Brussels Biennial; Marrakech Biennial; Kunsthall Mulhouse; Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, London; Rencontre International d’Art Performance de Quebec; L’appartement 22 Rabat; Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo; ccmoca, Buenos Aires: Dare Dare, Montreal and for bmic Cutting Edge Series, London. pedrogomezegana.net Ulrika Gomm (b.1978, Stockholm, Sweden) lives and works in Stockholm. She is educated from Konstfack University and The Royal Institute of Arts, both in Stockholm. Her work has been presented internationally at rinosophes, Detroit, US; inca, Detroit; 0047, Oslo, Norway; Art Copenhagen, Denmark, and in Sweden at Konsthall C, Gallery Nikla Belenius, Haninge

Konsthall and Botkyrka Konsthall. Residencies include iaspis, Stockholm; Pulse Laser Studio, Ohio and inca, Detroit. ulrikagomm.com Steinar Haga Kristensen (b.1980, Oslo, Norway) lives in Oslo. He has exhibited at Entrée, Bergen; Etablissement d’EN Face Projects, Brussels, Belgium; wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Kunsthall Oslo; Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, Denmark; UKS, Oslo and Kunsthall Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. He is educated from the National Academy of Art, Oslo, Akademie er Bildenden Künste, Wien and Sydney College of Art. steinarhagakristensen.org Jeannine Han (b.1979, Oakland, CA, US) and Dan Riley (b.1982, Groveland, MA, US) live in New York. They collaborate on projects involving textile, sound, and patterns. Their work exploits the various technical processes involved in industrial production, and further explores them in the context of a single object or space. By re-imagining the uses for these processes an entire landscape of objects are created that both reference and provide a counter point to the cultural objects of contemporary living. scisci.org/danriley scisci.org/han Tamara Henderson (b.1982, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada) lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Exhibitions include Sans Tete au Monde (with Santiago Mostyn), Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway; Charmer Scripture, Rodeo, London; Bottles Under The Influence, with Julia Feyrer for Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Canada; On The Tip Of My Tongue, Magasin 3, Stockholm, Sweden and documenta 13, Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany. Henderson is educated from The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm. Lisa Him-Jensen (b. 1980, Stockholm, Sweden) lives and works in Bergen, Norway. She is educated form Bergen

Academy of Art and Design and works mainly with painting, drawing and text. lisahimjensen.com David Horvitz (b.1977, Los Angeles, CA, US) lives in Brooklyn. His work considers strategies of information circulation and the impermanence of digital artifacts. He has exhibited at The Kitchen, New York; Art Metropole, Toronto, Canada; Or Gallery, Vancouver, Canada; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark; Chert Galerie, Berlin, Germany and New Museum, New York. Projects also include venues like The Clocktower Gallery, Recess, Creative Time, Goethe Institute, Library New York, Triple Canopy, Fillip and Post at MoMA. davidhorvitz.com Marianne Hurum (b.1978, Oslo, Norway) lives in Oslo. She is educated from University of Illinois, Chicago, US, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway and Malmø Art Academy, Sweden. Her work derives from and revolves around painting. It also includes sculpture, photograms and text. Her work has been shown at Landings Vestfossen; UKS; Rogaland Kunstsenter; NoPlace; Tidens Krav and Christian Torp, and internationally at Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden, Printed Matter, New York and Lothringer 13_Laden, Munich, Germany. Hurum is currently chair at UKS, Oslo. mariannehurum.com Toril Johannessen (b.1978, Harstad, Norway) lives in Bergen, Norway. Her work engages in scientific topics and sheds light on the metaphors and creative elements inherent to the various methods of knowledge production. She has had solo exhibitions at UKS, Oslo; Bergen Kunsthall No.5; Oslo Fine Art Society and Lautom Contemporary, Oslo. Group exhibitions include Mom, Am I Barbarian?, 13th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; Nouvelle Vagues, Palais de Tokyo, France; Curiosity: Art and the pleasures of knowing, Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; documenta 13, Kassel, Germany and Machine Worries, Machine Hearts at Blank Projects, Cape

Town, South Africa. Johannessen is educated from Bergen National Academy of Arts and Design and The Mountain School of Art, US. toriljohannessen.no Espen Johansen (b.1985, Bergen) is an art historian and a freelance curator based in Bergen. Exhibitions include sticks, stones and bones with Terence Koh at Entrée, Tag Team and Festplassen, Bergen; Tora Endestad Bjørkheim and Bjørn-Henrik Lybeck (duo-show) at Entrée; Nabolag with Dino Dikic, Jørund Hannevold, Arne Rygg, Johan Sandborg, Kari Storø, Semund Svelle, Muskelpust and Ytter for Tag Team Studio. Omar Johnsen is a member of the Bergen-based electro-pop band Casiokids, touring internationally since 2008. The band works on the borderline to performative art. Johnsen investigates the craftsmanship of building analogue modular electronic synthesizers, exploring the concept of plate reverb and much more. casiokids.com Sanya Kantarovsky (b.1982, Moscow, Russia) lives in New York. He is educated from ucla. He has exhibited in venues like Altman Siegel, San Francisco, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, Germany; Marc Foxx, LA, Tanya Leighton, Berlin; Studio Voltaire, London, Office Baroque, Brussels, The Moscow Museum of Modern Art; Bortolami, New York and Wallspace, New York. kantarovsky.com Annette Kierulf (b.1964, Oslo, Norway) and Caroline Kierulf (b.1968, Oslo) both live in Bergen. Together they work with woodcuts, objects and artist books. Their work usually circulates around issues about economy, ecology and the western lifestyle. Exhibitions include Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen; Nightwork in the Garden II, Kunstner-forbundet, Oslo; A Mortgage is Today’s Rock’n’roll, Galleri Norske

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Grafikere, Oslo; Brannon, Büttner, Kierulf, Kierulf, Kilpper, Bergen Kunsthall to mention a few. kierulf.info Terence Koh is a New York-based artist with a diverse practice, spanning from large room installations and transgressive performances to tiny drawings and subtle poetry. His work seems to reveal a sort of restless searching or a sense of yearning for something indefinable, often expressed through juxtaposing religious, cultural and historical symbols in a poetic – and sometimes absurd – visual universe. Previous solo exhibitions include Entrée/Tag Team, Bergen; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany and the Vienna Secession, Austria. nothingtoodoo.com Lars Korff Lofthus (b.1978, Lofthus) lives and works in Bergen and Hardanger. His work investigates geographical identity. He is educated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design, The Royal Danish Art Academy and Nordic Art School in Kokkola, Finland. He has exhibited at lautom Contem-porary, Oslo; Bergen Art Museum; Bergen Kunsthall; Entrée, Maihaugen; Transition Gallery, London and Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin. larskorfflofthus.no Ingeborg Kvame (b.1978, Stavanger, Norway) lives and works in Stavanger. She is educated from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. She uses drawing, textile and objects to investigate the borderland towards the unconscious. Her interest lies in the hidden and enigmatic aspects of life, and reaching towards a sensuous realm. Her work has been shown at Bryne Kunstforening; L/R Residency, Suldal; Galleri Sult; Prosjektrom Normanns; Galeria Plop!, Santiago, Chile, Wip:konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden; Stavanger Art Museum and Stavanger Kunstforening. ingeborgkvame.net Oliver Laric (b.1981, Innsbruck, Austria) lives in Berlin. He studied at the

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Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien. His work has been exhibited internationally in New Museum’s Triennial (2015), New York; Kunsthaus Hamburg; Entrée, Bergen; James Cohan Gallery, New York; Tanya Leighton, Berlin; Art Statements, Art Basel to mention a few. His work seeks to parse the productive potential of the copy, the bootleg, and the remix, and examine their role in the formation of both historic and contemporary image cultures. oliverlaric.com Erik Larsson (b.1987, Stockholm, Sweden) lives and works in London. He is educated form Slade School of Fine Art, London and Konstfack University, Stockholm. Exhibitions include; What yawned upwards (...), The Institute of Jamais Vu, London; The Opposite of What We Now Know to be True; Fold Gallery, London; Contemporary Figuratio, Udstillingsstedet Q, Copenhagen, Denmark and Flowers; Abyss; Parataxis, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain. erik-larsson.se Liz Magic Laser (b.1981, New York City) lives in Brooklyn. She is educated from Whitney Independent Study Program and Columbia University. She has exhibited in venues like Diverse Works, Houston, Texas; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, Germany; Lisson Gallery, London; Mälmo Konsthall, Sweden; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia and MoMA PS1, New York. lizmagiclaser.com Else Leirvik (b.1972, Stavanger, Norway) lives in Stavanger. She is educated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Exhibitions include venues Soft Galleri, Oslo; Galleri Opdahl, Stavanger; Another Space, Copenhagen, Denmark; Nomas Foundation, Rome; Galerie Opdahl, Berlin; Galleri Rekord, Oslo; No 5, Istanbul, Turkey and Open Source Gallery, New York. Her work investigates subjective space, limits, borders and the in-between, in form of sculptures and installations. elseleirvik.com

Malin Lennström-Örtwall (b.1976, Stockholm, Sweden)lives in Bergen, Norway and is educated from the Art Academy, Trondheim, Norway and The International Academy of Art, Palestine, Ramallah, Palestine. Her work deals with themes of loss, separation and vulnerability, exploring these poetically and politically. Her work has been shown at Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden; kode Art Museum of Bergen; Al Mahatta Gallery, Ramallah, Palestine; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway; Entrée, Bergen; Møre and Romsdal Art Center, Molde, Norway; Sweden; PasaJist Independent Art Space, Istanbul, Turkey and Trondheim Art Museum. malinlennstromortwall.com Gabriel Lester (b.1972, Amsterdam, Netherlands) lives in Shanghai, China and Amsterdam. His works consist of installations, performances, film and video, with a desire to tell stories and construct environments that support them, or propose their own narrative interpretation. By dissecting, editing, cutting up, repositioning and forcing perspectives Lester aspires to captivate and engage. Ultimately his works suggest both rational consciousness as well as associative magic thought. gabriellester.com Andrew Taggart (b.1976, Canada) and Chloe Lewis (b.1979, usa) are the duo Lewis & Taggart, based in Bergen. Their work has been exhibited at Entrée, Bergen; Kunstverein Leipzig (de); Volt, Bergen; Platform Stockholm (se); NoPlace, Oslo (no); and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (pl). In parallel to their studio practice, Lewis & Taggart operate The Museum of Longing and Failure, a small museum with an emphasis on sculptural practices. lewisandtaggart.com Cato Løland (b.1982 Kvinnherad) is based in Bergen. Exhibitions include The Spring Collection, Haugesund Kunstforening; Soft Walls Hard Work, Hardanger Folk museum; Gruppeutstilling, Kraft, Bergen; Bones keep breaking, Coffee is being spilled; Galleri

BOA, Oslo; Inside and Out, Kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga, Latvia; Sol brenn skodde bort, Galleri Giga, Stord; Love is Old, Love is New, Entrée at Bergen Kjøtt; Closer To White, Tag Team Studio, Bergen and Zwischenraum: In Between, Der Kunstverein Hamburg. catololand.blogspot.com Klara Sofie Ludvigsen (b.1983, Stord, Norway) lives and works in Bergen, Norway. She is educated from Kent Institute of Art and Design, Canterbury, UK and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. With photography as main medium she deals with social and existential issues. klarasofie.com Anna Lundh (b.1979, Uppsala, Sweden) lives and works in Stockholm and New York. She is educated from Konstfack University, Stockholm and Cooper Union, New York. She has exhibited at Tensta Konsthall, Bonniers Konsthall, Haninge Konsthall, Kalmar Konstmuseum, Tensta Konsthall, and internationally at Entrée Bergen, Norway; West, The Hague, Netherlands; Toves, Copenhagen, Denmark and also at Apexart, Marian Spore, Exit Art, The Kitchen and New Museum, all in New York. annalundh.com Bjørn-Henrik Lybeck (b.1985 in Oslo) lives in Bergen. He is educated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Exhibitions include duo exhibition with Tora Endestad Bjørkheim, Entrée, Bergen; Trial & Error, Shedhalle Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; One Night Only, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Bring You Own Plant, Wizard Gallery, Oslo and Vestlands-utstillingen, Kunsthall Stavanger. bjornhenriklybeck.com Cameron MacLeod (b.1975, Truro, Canada) lives in Bergen. His works interrogate cultural boundaries of technology and the relationship of these to functionality, recreation, critical thought and invention. He is educated from Konstfack University, Stockholm. He has exhibited at Dortmund Bodega, Oslo;

Pisolet Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria; Abbaye aux Dames, Caen, France, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, California, US; L/R Residency + Entrée, Bergen and Blank Projects, Cape Town, South Africa. cameronmacleod.org Jumana Manna (b.1987, New Jersey) lives and works in Berlin. Manna’s work explores the construction of human identity in relation to historical narratives and subcultural communities, primarily through video and sculpture. She employs a language of minimalism and abstraction to reformulate familiar objects into a state of ambiguity and weaves together portraits of morally dubious characters or events. She has exhibited at SculptureCenter, New York; HenieOnstad Art Centre; Kunsthall Oslo; Bergen Assembly and the 11th Sharjah Biennial tom mention a few. jumanamanna.com Dillan Marsh (b.1980, York, UK) lives in Bergen where he graduated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design. He has participated in exhibitions and projects internationally including Seljord Kunstforening; Deuxpiece, Basel, Switzerland; Sculpture Space, Utica NY, Entrée, Bergen; Tag Team Studio, Bergen and Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Germany. dillanmarsh.com Kyle Morland (b.1986, Johannesburg, South Africa) lives in Cape Town where he graduated from Michaelis School of Fine Art. Exhibitions include New Sculptures, Falswork II, Blank Projects, Cape Town and Elevator (in collaboration with Claire van Blerk), Stevenson, Cape Town; Housewarming, Atlantic House, Cape Town; An Experiment to Test the Destiny of the Word, Johannesburg; Bootleg, Evil Son, Cape Town and Working Title at Goodman Gallery, New York. kylemorland.com Bjørn Mortensen (b.1977, Bergen) is based in Bergen. His work has been exhibited at Entrée, New York Satellite; NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1 (us); Kraft (no); Spazio Gerra (it); Tag Team (no);

Knipsu (no); Passatge (es); Potsyd (no); Banská Stiavnica (svk) and Elthorne Studios (uk). In addition to his own practice he runs a gallery, Tollbodallmenningen 39, promoting young artists from his studio space in a residential building in the city center of Bergen. Together with artist Mathijs van Geest he runs the small publishing house Apis Press. bjornmortensen.com Santiago Mostyn (b.1981, San Francisco, US) lives in Stockholm, Sweden. Mostyn is an artist and photographer who make prints, videos, sculptures, and books based on personal interactions with subcultural communities throughout the world. Mostyn is a graduate of Yale University and the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, and has exhibited internationally at venues including mass moca, Kunst-Werke Berlin, the Hasselblad Foundation, and Fotografiska, Stockholm. santiagomostyn.com Randi Nygård (b.1977, Bergen, Norway) lives in Berlin and Oslo. She is educated from Trondheim Art Academy, Norway and has exhibited in venues such as Kunstverein Springhornhof, Germany; cact, Center for Contemporary Art, Tessaloniki, Greece; Museo Nazionale di Castel S. Angelo, Rome, Italy; Akershus Kunstsenter, Lillestrøm, Norway; Nordens Hus Reykjavik, Iceland; Tromsø Kunstforening, Norway, Neukoellner Kunstverein, Kunstraum T27, Berlin, Germany, and the Kitakyushu Biennial 2007, Kokura, Japan. randinygard.com Oliver Pietsch (b.1972) lives and works in Berlin. He is educated from Munich Academy of the Arts. Developed through filmic montage, his films are marked by a solid archival testimony to cinematic and audio-visual culture. From old films to more recent ones, from documentary to independent cinema through to Hollywood blockbusters, Pietsch plays around with fictional re-interpretations, intrinsically creating a new narrative. oliverpietsch.de

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Raqs Media Collective was founded in 1992 by Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. Raqs enjoys playing a plurality of roles, often appearing as artists, occasionally as curators, sometimes as philosophical agent provocateurs. They make contemporary art, films, curated exhibitions, edited books, and staged events, collaborations with architects, computer programs, and also act like writers and theatre directors. They have founded processes that have left deep impacts on contemporary culture in India. raqsmediacollective.net Borghild Rudjord Unneland (b.1978, Oslo) lives and works in Bergen and is educated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Unneland works primarily with installations, using everyday objects as the most important tool. Her work reveals conditions and moods that are difficult to verbalize. Through small and simple means she makes familiar situations weird and wonderful. bunneland.no Athi-Patra Ruga (b.1984, The Republic of Transkei, Umtata) lives and works in Johannesburg and Cape Town. His work explores the borders between fashion, performance and contemporary art; he exposes and subverts the body in relation to structure, ideology and politics. Exhibitions include South African Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale, Italy; Nolan Judin Gallery, Berlin; Moscow International Biennale For Young Art; National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa; Performa 11; Stenersen Museum, Oslo, Norway and Guangzhou Triennial in China. athipatraruga.blogspot.com Anngjerd Rustand (b.1982) lives in Bergen. She is educated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design and the Royal Art Academy in Stockholm, Sweden. Exhibitions in Norway include Bluberry and Ash, Prosjektrom Normanns, Stavanger; The Body Plan, Oslo Fine Art Society, Oslo; The Dust Will Roll Together, Entrée, Bergen; Back

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to Basics, Hordaland kunstsenter, Bergen; Å bære tegn, Møllebyen Litteraturfestival and Game of Life, Kristiansand Kunsthall. anngjerd.no Arne Rygg (b.1967, Randaberg, Norway) lives and works in Bergen and is educated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design. He is concerned with how meaning is created, changed and dissolved, and has a particular focus on issues concerning national identity. arnerygg.no Vilde Salhus Røed (b.1981) lives in Bergen where she is a member of Flaggfabrikken, Center for Photography & Contemporary Art. She is educated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Kunsthoch-schule Berlin Weissensee and Philosophy of Aesthetics, Art Criticism and Theater Theory from The University of Bergen. Exhibitions include venues like Preus Museum, Horten; Entrée, Bergen; Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; The Woodmill, London; Kode, Bergen, Visningsrommet USF, Bergen and Podium, Oslo. Salhus Røed is on the board of bkfh artists’ organization since 2010 and was also a founding member of Bergen Atelier Gruppe in 2009. vildesr.no Espen Sommer Eide (b.1972, Tromsø) and Kristin Tårnesvik (b.1964, Tromsø) are both based in Bergen. They have both been devoted to collecting material and making archives, be it endangered languages (Sommer Eide) or historical vintage documents (Tårnesvik). With an experimental and poetic approach Tårnesvik & Sommer Eide are searching for new expressions in their collaborative projects, resulting so far in different constellations. Exhibitions are including Stenersen Museum, Oslo; Entrée, Bergen; Rad #5, Bergen; Performance Now 4, Bergen; Cabinet, New York and the radio-play entitled A Trial of Weeds, as part of Performa 13, in collaboration with Hordaland Art Center. The project Korsmos ugressarkiv/The Korsmo Weed

Archive is part of Arts Council Norway’s larger seven-project canopy; What’s With The Archive? formativedager.tumblr.com Andrea Spreafico (b. 1976, Ravenna, Italy) lives and works in Bergen, Norway. He is educated from University of Bologna, Italy; University of Reims, France and Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg, Germany. Exhibitions include Details of Love – an exhibition about cars (with D Baur), Premiss, Bergen; Show (with P. Bergmann), Muffathalle, Munich, Germany; Flagg, Entrée, Bergen; f_ommt (with the forschungsgruppe_f), Kunstverein Bamberg, Germany; Kill me baby one more time (with C. Eckly and Y. Cohen) Galleri SE, Bergen and Engangsverk, Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall; Stranger in a Norwegian Landscape, Abbaye-auxDames, Caen, France; and I have met destiny in quite a similar way, Teatro Curvo Semedo, Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal. andreaspreaficodeluxe.org André Tehrani (b.1980 in Tønsberg) lives in Oslo. Exhibitions include Some General Thoughts on Wreckage, Tegnerforbundet, Oslo; Lost Allusions, Entrée, Bergen; Game of Life, Kristiansand Kunsthall, Norway; The Limits of Language Means the Limits of My World, Platform Stockholm, Sweden; This House, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, Monika Stricker, kab Art Centre, Brussels, Belgium; Idiot Cards For a Bygone Revolt, NoPlace, Oslo, and Sound Versus System, Kunsthall Oslo. andretehrani.com Sandra Vaka Olsen (b.1980, Stavanger, Norway) lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is working with the relationship between the body and technological developments of increasingly invasive nature. She is educated from The Royal Danish Art Academy and Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway. Her work has been exhibited at Fauna, Copenhagen, Denmark; Malmö Konsthall, Sweden; ceo gallery, Malmö; Sweden; imo Projects, Copenhagen, Denmark,

Rogaland Kunstsenter, Stavanger, Norway and Stavanger Art Museum. sandravaka.com Kjersti Vetterstad (b.1977, Drammen, Norway) lives and works in Drammen. She is educated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway and Konstfack University Stockholm, Sweden. Her work includes video, installation, drawing and performance. In addition she participates in several collaborations, including Mom & Jerry with Monica Winther and Fine Day with Peter Mitterer (Sex Tags). She has exhibited in venues like UKS, Oslo; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Contemporary Art; Kunsthall Oslo; Konstnärshuset, Stockholm: Entrée, Bergen; w139, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Turku Biennial, Finland and 12 Days of Performance, Varaždin, Croatia. kjerstivetterstad.com Lina Viste Grønli (b.1976 Bergen, Norway) lives in Cambridge, MA, US and Oslo. She is educated from Oslo National Academy of Fine Arts and Århus Art School, Denmark. Her work is concerned with the materialization of language, often materialized in her combinations of semiotic sculpture and collage techniques. She has exhibited at Performa ‘09, New York; Wiels Contem-porary Art Centre, Brussel, Belgium; Marres Centre of Contemporary Culture, Maastricht, Netherlands; Gaudel de Stampa, Paris, France; Christian Andersen, Copenhagen, Denmark and Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway. linavistegroenli.com

Bedwyr Williams (b.1974 St Asaph, Wales) lives in North Wales. He represented Wales at the 55st Venice Biennial (2013). Exhibitions also includes ECHT, The Salzburger Kunstverein in Salzburg, Austria; My Bad at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK and Ernste Tierre at Bonner Kunstverein in Bonn, Germany. bedwyrwilliams.com Magnhild Øen Nordahl (b.1985, Ulstein, Norway) lives and works in Bergenz. In recent years she has exhibited at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; Platform Stockholm, Sweden; Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney, Australia and NO.5 in Bergen Kunsthall, Norway. She is educated from the Master program of fine art at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm Sweden. magnhildnordahl.com Stian Ådlandsvik (b.1981, Bergen, Norway) lives in Oslo, Norway and Leipzig, Germany. He is educated from the Art Academy, Oslo and Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg, Germany. His work has been shown at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; mot international, London, UK; Bergen Art Museum; 1/9Unosunove, Rome, Italy; Erik Steen Gallery, Oslo, Entrée, Bergen and Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen. He has also undertaken several residencies like Platform China, Beijing; Künstler-haus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany and flacc, Genk, Belgium. stianadlandsvik.net

Sinta Werner (b. 1977, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Werner made her Master of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College in London, 2007. Werner aims to interrogate our conventional ways of seeing and representing through elaborate fictitious environments. The creation of architectonic works notably contributes to her exploration of virtual and physical boundaries, the notion of intervals and ‘in-betweens’ alongside other such aspects linking the two- and the three-dimensional. sinta.no

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About

Entrée is a non-profit and independent gallery promoting contemporary art and commissioning new works from local and international artists. Entrée was established in 2009 by artist Cato Løland and curator Randi Grov Berger. Today Entrée is run by Randi Grov Berger and helped out by artist Dillan Marsh. From 2014 we have also involved curator Espen Johansen. Since 2013 Entrée has run parallel programming with projects in New York. We work towards establishing a more permanent venue there to promote the artists we work with to a wider international audience and create dialog between the two cities. Posters are made by Jens Tandberg (2014, 2015), Stine Belden Røed (2013), Christian Bielke & Jens Tandberg (2012), Christian Brandt (2009-11). Collaborative projects include institutions; Bergen Assembly, Performa Biennial, Kunsthall Stavanger, L/R Residency, Nordic Artists’ Centre Dale, Printed Matter Inc., Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen Kjøtt, Platform Stockholm, Tag Team Studio, kode Art Museums of Bergen, Flaggfabrikken, International Studio & Curatorial Program (New York). We are open Thursday–Sunday from 12–4pm, and by appointment, just let us know. We are also happy to welcome larger groups. Contact Randi Grov Berger e-mail: entree.randi@gmail.com mobile: +47 951 96 773 entreebergen.no

Entrée is kindly supported by Arts Council Norway and Bergen Municipality. International projects has been supported by Office for Contemporary Art Norway. Photo credits: p.98—99 by Liz Eve; p.100—101 by Chani Bockwinkel; p.126—130, 134, 150—151 by Bent René Synnevåg; p.131 by Andrea Spreafico; p.136—138 by Vegard Kleven; p.148—149 by Kobie Nel. Other photos by Randi Grov Berger.

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