ODD FREDRIK HEIBERG PAUL ONDITI ROALD ANDERSEN D. Y.
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In-house A place for development of both roots and wings. The house shields us from the elements and treasures our memories and secrets. It is both a protection and an obstacle. It encloses friends and family, and is also the foremost identity marker. The house has functioned as a motive of several of my previous works, both as a physical shape and as a pure idea. I have studied the house as object in different materials and scales, both in exhibitions and as a sculpture in public commissions. The desire to create an exhibition where the house not merely functions as an art object, but also houses other works of art was perhaps a necessary follow-up of this practice. To construct an object to physically enter, inhabit - and wear - and not just observe from the outside. But of course, this installation is not a house, it is the physical experience of a house imitated by means of its floors, walls and doors. The actual expression in-house is an international term, used to describe what you can realize depending on your own resources within a company without external assistance. This term is also a
precise description for this project: A meeting place for three different artists, a starting point for an open, curatorial process. In-house’s final architecture and the range of artworks, their location, scope and design was largely decided during the construction period. The goal was to nurture an open exchange of ideas through a meticulous construction process. This installation influenced the creation of its artworks, and subsequently it controls the audience’s encounter, by creating a limiting tension displacing the traditional art experience. Thus, In-house becomes a utility that holds us, the art and the exhibition space up for discussion. Odd Fredrik Heiberg Artist and curator
Mutual exchange by Martin Berner Mathiesen
The project In-house made for Spriten Kunsthall in Skien, is a collaborative venture between three artists and a carefully constructed house. The construction is playing both host and vessel for the embodiment of the artists artworks. In-house invites the audience to take part in an exhibition that offers an alternate surrounding for the experience of art, outside and inside its usual exhibition space otherwise known as the “white cube�. The prefix of the exhibition title suggests that we are dealing with symbolic connections and possible negations. What first comes to mind when entering the space, is how the artist trio, Paul Onditi, Odd Fredrik Heiberg and Roald Andersen d.y., has taken charge of the environment in which their art is being exhibited. We are presented a partly enclosed structure that we have to go inside, to be able to experience the artworks. The title of the exhibition, In-house, makes one think about what a house signifies. It might indicate a location where we take refuge, a place for building our identity, raising a family, or simply a place where we can be at our most private. Simultaneously it could be a space filled with secrets and fantasy, trauma and repression. The philosopher Gaston Bachelard describes in his book Poetics of Space (1958), how a house can be understood as a phenomenological experience, as something that relates to us as a sensory phenomenon and not only as pure matter. Bachelard further describes the house as a shelter and space for day-dreaming, a place where our imagination can unravel. Almost like a child who builds a house out of a blanket and two chairs and daydreams its contents.
1. Plusminus Paul Onditi, mixed media on PVC offset sheet
5. Uten tittel / Untitled Paul Onditi, mixed media on veneer
Once finding yourself inside In-house you are your own guide from door to door, being led through the house by the architecture itself. This gives the possibility of getting up close to the artworks, but with no way of returning to the room behind you, without entering from the very beginning. The artist Paul Onditi’s work Plusminus in the constructions first room, projects a visual narrative, partly resembling a worn-out filmstrip played in an old cinema. The strips show images from the past with impressions of a civilization in between construction and destruction. The old and destroyed constructions appears as dreamscapes confronting this present moment. The work gains a transparent and rich materiality out of the artists use of unusual materials such as offset sheets made of PVC. By giving the work an archival quality, Onditi’s work turns us into witnesses. In moving through the different rooms, we see the artworks overlap each other partly, taint each other mutually, sometimes imitating their surroundings to the point of a mutual exchange. Occasionally the artwork of one artist is seen serving as both guest and host to the other artists work of art. This approach is at its most lucid in the way Paul Onditi’s mural on both the wall and door structure serves as both context and host to Roald Andersen d.y.’s almost childlike and eerie drawing. The fantasy figures, along with the use of combined techniques, serve as hints on what’s to follow further into the In-house-structure. While moving inwards the works partly changes tone and material, into an almost uncanny quality.
Roald Andersen d.y.’s sculptural work Teori om sovende gulv / Theory on Sleeping Floor, almost have a destabilizing and playful effect on the audience’s point of view in making the floor come alive. While Odd Fredrik Heiberg’s wall painting Ikon / Icon shows two energetic, almost floating abstract figures supporting a frame. Here the work itself serves as a reminder of the original wooden structure of the wall, as if to remind us of the condition this painting was created for. Just as the work What Remains by Andersen d.y. and Onditi’s Vision of my future studio also in each of their individual way echoes the motifs of the house.
6. Uten tittel / Untitled Paul Onditi and Roald Andersen d.y., mixed media on paper
2. Eik / Oak Odd Fredrik Heiberg, oil on canvas 3. Oppfatning / Perception Odd Fredrik Heiberg, concrete, steel, pigment 4. Overbevisning / Conviction Odd Fredrik Heiberg, concrete, steel, pigment
The last room of In-house is perhaps the most peculiar, partly because it resembles a child’s playroom only with an eerie and enigmatic atmosphere. The room is home to two works by Andersen d.y., and two by Odd Fredrik Heiberg. Andersen d.y.’s drawing that is “untitled” and the “dissolving” sculptural bedframe from the series Drømmeanlegget / Dream Facility sets the scene pointing to a childhood long past with only fading memories left. There is a window in the room, that frames a rotating painting, Empatisk motivilje / Emphatic Defiance, by Heiberg. For the first time, we encounter a work of art that exists both inside and outside In-house. No exterior is visible other than the abstract, imaginative and warm figures that makes this rotating vista, a room in itself and a canvas operational on both sides. This active quality is present in the way both sides of the canvas, lit through by powerful spotlights, alternates as the front and back of the painting. The paintings rotation produces a mirror image of the motive every time the backside is visible. In this way, the painting in motion is able to detach itself from a stable and definitive interpretation. The motifs appear, as if for the first time, for every rotating turn of repetition. We also see the figures taking patterns from its surroundings, all the time in motion, so that a vivid relationship between the audience, house and the art is established. Heiberg’s Sort hytte / Black Cabin is the closing work by the exit door of In-house. The work suggests both a playful and sinister sortie for the audience, as elements of adolescence combined with a portrait image of a head of state, are pointing outwards in the direction of the foundations of a society and its politics.
As an assemblage of references and symbols In-house challenge our imagination and explores how the structure of the house inhabits both the familiar, imaginative and uncanny. The house, along with the artworks, meets us in a visual metamorphosis playing a part in a mutual exchange of meanings and motifs. In this way In-house gives the possibility for an experience of art in a context that invites an open-ended experience of the three artist’s artworks. In-house invites us, as such, inside a place for a unique and individual experience of art.
8. What Remains Roald Aandersen d.y., serial sketch, pencil and water colour on paper 9. Fra drømmeanlegget / Dream Facility Roald Aandersen d.y., serial sketch, pencil on paper 11. Ikon / Icon Odd Fredrik Heiberg, acrylic colour on veneer
12. Vision of my Future Studio Paul Onditi, mixed media on paper
7. Uten tittel / Untitled Paul Onditi, mixed media on MDF
15. Fra drømmeanlegget / Dream Facility Roald Andersen d.y., painted wood
16. Sort hytte / Black Cabin Odd Fredrik Heiberg, litography and water color on paper
Odd Fredrik Heiberg (Skien) works project-based and with different mediums. Over the last five years he has focused on painting, and the possibilities that open when movement is presented in the equation. He explores repetition and rotation in addition to light, shadow and see-through elements by using both sides of the canvas. Over the last few years Odd Fredrik has exhibited in Telemark Kunstsenter, Galleri Lynx in Oslo, Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall in Arendal, Kunsthall Grenland, Porsgrunn and Spriten Kunsthall.
Paul Onditi (Nairobi, Kenya) paints pictures that explore global issues by use of experimental and very challenging techniques. By the use of acid, bleach, pigment, ink and shoe polish he visualizes an imaginery world inhabitated by his alter ego. Still, we recognize the same ideological, political and religious differences and tentions that plague our collective existence. Paul has exhibited in Rezeption Gallery in Frankfurt, Goethe Institut in Nairobi, VOLTA in New York, Ostrale Show, Germany and at the Kenyan Pavillion at the Venice Biennial 2017.
Roald Andersen d.y. (Kristiansand) has an art production that spans from prints to sculpture, installations and performance. With honed skills he transforms everyday objects into artworks, often with suprising and seemingly impossible forms. Roald has had an extensive production over the last few years and has exhibited his works amongst other places at Kristiansand Kunsthall, Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, KODE Bergen, NHLspace in Copenhagen and Galleri Jacob Bjørn in Århus, Denmark.
Martin Berner Mathiesen is an art historian, critic and writer based in Oslo. After completing his MA in 2015, Mathiesen have been active as Editorial Assistant and Researcher for the research based project OSLO PILOT. Mathiesen has written texts for several Norwegian contemporary artists, as well as writing critique e.g. for the website of art magazine KUNSTforum. In the years 2013-14 he was part of a duo running an art blog with Oslo’s art scene as its locus.
10. Teori om sovende gulv / Theory on Sleeping Floors Roald Andersen d.y., solid oak and oak flooring *
14. Empatisk motvilje / Empathetic Reluctance Odd Fredrik Heiberg, oil on canvas Detail from installation, various materials: Glas window, electric engine, wood, metal, styrofoam
13. Uten tittel / Untitled Roald Andersen d.y., mixed media on paper
Odd Fredrik Heiberg, Paul Onditi and Roald Andersen d.y. wish to thank the following: Spriten Kunsthall by Tom-Erik Lønnerød and Catrine Danielsen, Fredrik Brattberg, Cissi Hultman, Kjetil Harket, Kristian Norheim, Grethe Arntsen and Thor Bjørn Omnes (Skagerak Energi AS), Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Terje Gundersen and Teater Ibsen, Kari Skoe Fredriksen, Stine Gonsholt, Aksel, Albin and Abel Skoe Heiberg. In-house is supported by Skagerak Energi AS and Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond.
All photos: Robert Dreier except * Odd Fredrik Heiberg
14. Empatisk motvilje / Empathetic Reluctance (installation view) Odd Fredrik Heiberg, oil on canvas *
Spriten Kunsthall, Tømmerkaia 19, 3732 Skien www.spriten.no