After School Special: En Maleriutstilling med Hedvig Biong, strukturer av Nedberg & Kantun og abstrakte klangstrukturer av Daniel Thornhill
(for english scroll down)
After School Special er begeistret over å kunne invitere til en maleriutstilling på Landmark! Ideen bak utstillingen kommer fra et behov for og et ønske om å kunne presentere noe utenfor tidsbaserte arbeider - så som video og/eller performance - som Landmark og After School Special vanligvis gjør. Det faktum at Landmark’s arkitektur ikke har noen reelle vegger man kan borre i har vært det som har “fremprovosert” og inspirert til utstillingen.
Veggene som ikke finnes har etterlatt seg en lengsel etter å presentere kunst laget for vegg. Man ønsker jo ofte å gjøre det man ikke kan… Vi har lett etter en måte å “løse problemet” på, og kom frem til ideen om å invitere to kunstnere. En til å designe og bygge en konstruksjon som vil fungere som en erstatning for veggene og på den måten bære kunstverkene, og selvsagt kunstneren hvis arbeider vi ønsker å vise frem. Resultatet er et spennende samarbeid mellom de to kunstnerne Nedberg & Kantun – sammen har de designet en konstruksjon som vil bære en rekke nye oljemalerier laget av kunstneren Hedvig Biong.
Den gode tonen mellom Joar Nedberg f.1984 og Audar Kantun f.1985 ble unnfanget langs bakerste rad ved Kunsthøyskolen i Bergen en gang i 2010, og sprang blant annet ut fra et felles hat/elsk-forhold til sort/hvit landskapsfotografi. Guttene dro dialogen ut i praksis, pakket snippveska og la ut for å eksponere 8x10” landskapsfotografier som ved en senere anledning er vist i utstillingsammenheng. Siden den gang har det ballet på seg. I 2011 snublet de over en rød fraktkasse i kontaineren utenfor Bergen Kunstmuseum som ble utspringet til gallerikonseptet Mill Race Gallery. Den dag i dag deler de kontor i et atlierfelleskap i Damsgårdsveien hvor det utveksles triks og konstrueres på dagtid og utøves fandenvold og destrueres på kvelds- og natterstid.
I skrivende stund klekker de ut et rammeverk for Biongs malerier og smaker på beskrivelsen av denne seneste arbeidsoppgaven de har fått…. Design og konstruksjon…. De finner den velsmakende og interessant.
Kantun & Nedberg drar hvor vinden blåser og gjerne dit pepperen gror.
Hedvig Biong f.1985 har studert ved avd. for fotografi ved Kunsthøyskolen i Bergen. Hun er medlem av Gruppe 11 ved siden av flere andre samarbeidsprosjekter og egen kunstnerisk praksis. Biong jobber med tegning, performance, fotografi og maleri. Som sekstenåring fikk Biong komme hjem til en gammel kunstner på Toten for å drikke te. Kunstneren var lokalkjendis og malte abstrakte malerier. Han hadde satt et par regler for hvordan man skulle tilnærme seg kunsten. Kunstneren trodde på maleriets evne til å utrykke andre sider ved den menneskelige tilværelsen, sidene som ikke kunne forklares gjennom logikk og intellekt. Han så på følelser som abstrakte fenomener som ville derfor best la seg utrykke gjennom det abstrakte. Han snakket om maleriene i sammenheng med musikk – og fargene i sammenheng med smak. I sansene fantes det systemer som hang sammen på ulogiske måter.
De siste årene har Biong malt figurative motiver på framsiden av lerretet og abstrakte maleirer på baksiden. På framsiden strebet hun etter det skjøre, forståelige og figurative – mens baksidene ble noe hun tidvis skammet seg over. Det brutalt intuitive, meditative, uintellegente, ukontrollerbare, ekspressive og primitive. De abstrakte bildene ble for Biong et biprodukt, bygd opp av et behov for å slippe kontrollen, fjerne seg fra ønsket om perfeksjon og å i større grad utnytte materialiteten oljemalingen innehar. Det var et behov for å la maleriet slippe å etterligne noe det ikke er. Malerier som ikke kopierere virkeligheten – men som er objekter i seg selv.
Under åpningen av utstillingen vil Daniel Thornhill fremføre abstrakte klangstrukturer med gitarer og elektronikk. Thornhill spiller vanligvis i bandene Junk Machine, Black Rhino og Hotel Hotel og jobber ellers med musikk i flere felt, både som cellist, gitarist, pianist, vokalist, låtskriver, produsent, studiomusiker og komponist.
Thornhill har vokst opp i et tungt klassisk musikkmiljø og turnert hele verden med symfoniorkestre i ung alder, før han begynte å bevege seg innover mot rock’n’roll. I løpet av 2012 vil det dukke opp minst tre utgivelser med Thornhill som medvirkende.
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Utstillingen åpner Onsdag 2 mai klokken 20:00 og kommer til å stå til og med Torsdag 3 mai når Nordiske Forfatterskoler holder arrangement med opplesning inne i utstillingen.
After School Special 2 mai er kuratert av Marthe Elise Stramrud og støttet av Bergen Kommune og Norsk Kulturråd.
CC: 30,- / Dørene åpner 20:00
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ENGLISH:
After School Special: Oil paintings and a designed structure; Hedvig Biong and Nedberg & Kantun
After School Special are thrilled to present our very first “traditional art exhibition” – traditional in the sense that there will be art works on display that are not time based like performance or video, but rather works of art made to be hung on a wall.
The idea behind this particular evening was born out of the need to present these exact types of art works – just because we simply can’t.The fact that Landmark’s architecture has no “real” walls has been both the problem and the inspiration.
The missing walls has left a longing to present art made for walls. One always wants to make the impossible possible, right? We have been searching for a way to “solve the problem” of the missing walls when we eventually came up with the idea of inviting two artists, someone to design and build a structure that could support the art works, and also the artists to present. The result is an exciting collaboration where the artists Nedberg & Kantun has designed and built a structure to support a series of new oil paintings made by the artist Hedvig Biong.
The positive dialogue between Audar Kantun b. 1985 and Joar Nedberg b.1984 was conceived along the back row at the Art Academy in Bergen in the year 2010. The conversations ran, amongst other things, from a common hate/love relationship with the black-and-white landscape tradition of photography. The boys took the dialogue into practice, packed their backpacks and set out to expose 8 X 10” landscape photographs that at later date is shown in exhibition contexts. Since then different projects has appeared. In 2011 they stumbled upon a red crate in a container outside Bergen Art Museum, which became the source of the gallery-concept Mill Race Gallery. To this day they share an office in a studio collective in Damsgårdsveien in Bergen where they construct and exchange tricks.
At the moment they hatch out a framework for Biong’s paintings and taste the description of this latest task… Design and Construction… They find it tasty.
Kantun & Nedberg goes where the wind is blowing - very well to where the pepper grows.
Hedvig Biong b. 1985 studied at the department of photography in the Art Academy in Bergen. She is a member of the artists collective Gruppe 11 alongside several other collaborative projects and her own artistic practice. Biong works with drawing, performance, photography and painting.
At sixteen Biong was invited home to an old artists in her home town Toten for a cup of tea. The artists was a local celebrity that painted abstract paintings. He had set a few rules for how one should approach art. The artist thought of the painting’s ability to express other aspects of human existence, the aspects that could not be explained through logic and intellect. He looked at emotions as an abstract phenomena that best could be put to express through the abstract. He talked about paintings in the context of music - and the colors in association with taste. He believed that the senses had systems that belonged together in
illogical ways.
In recent years, Biong have been painting figurative motifs on the front of the canvas and abstract paintings on the back. On the front she sought after the fragile, understandable and figurative - while the back was something she was ashamed of from time to time. The brutal intuitive, meditative, unintelligent, uncontrollable, expressive and primitive. The abstract images were for Biong a byproduct, made up of the need to let go of the control, move away from the desire for perfection and to merely exploit the materiality of the oilpaint in it self. There was a need to get away from the painting having to mimic something it is not. Paintings that do not copy the reality - but that function as objects in their own.
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The exhibition opens Wednesday 2nd of May at 20:00 and will be up throughout Thursday the 3rd of May when Nordiske Forfatterskoler (Nordic academys of Creative Writing) are hosting a reading inside the exhibition.
After School Special the 2nd of May are curated by Marthe Elise Stramrud and supported by the Municipality of Bergen and the Norwegian Arts Council.
CC: 30,- // Doors open at 20:00
Pictures from After School Special 22nd of March!
Rachel de Joode: The Imaginary Order
This is a performace piece: a woman sits, hangs and presses herself against the glass plate and licks it. Her movements are weak, extremely slow and viscous like dough.
She moves without beginning, without end. She is in a soft state, pushing her mush against the plate which becomes a wall she cannot go through.
This piece is about a parallel, Google existence and the border between the physical and the imaginary. The internet offers the possibility of another kind of life, a non-physical, mechanical existence which resides separate from the body.
On the internet, there is an “ideal” self, a fictional self, that is not real. This parallel persona is reproduced and distributed in a place that we cannot see or grasp, and it lives and decays at a rate different than our physical selves. However, this alternate, Internet being is still a real thing, its thingness Google.
Rachel de Joode: Life is Very Long
(exhibited together with the performance “The Imaginary Order”)
Sculptural installation with tennis gravel, styrofoam and 60 frozen Dr. Oetker pizzas, which slowly defrosted as the performance went on.
This work explores death, life and time. The title takes its name from a poem by TS Elliot.
Frozen pizzas are fascinating to me, because of their form (perfectly round and disc-like), their simple color palette and their ubiquity. That the life of the pizza is extended by freezing is miraculous and bewildering. During the performance, the audience sees this freezing process reversed; a human size sculpture of 60 frozen pizzas slowly softens and weakens over a 20 minute period. The work smells like pizza, the sculpture appears to droop melancholically at its audience, and the pizzas, once stiff and rigid, hang limp, giving in to earth’s gravity.
Sunshine of Norway played a super show! :
And so did Easter:
de Looooong Joode drink:
All images are copyright the photographer Margit Selsjord – and also the specific artist.
After School Special 22 of march:
Rachel de Joode, Easter & Sunshine of Norway + introducing… Tor Erik Bøe!
Rachel de Joode, born in 1979 in Amersfoort (NL), studied time-based Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam. She currently lives and works in Berlin.
Rachel de Joode creates installations, sculptures, photographs and performances. Her work addresses an object’s ability to transfer and measure what Joode calls “our humanness”. She dedicates her practice to the questions “Why are we here?” and “What does it mean to be human today?” By addressing these questions, de Joode creates symbols through topics of study, including semiotics of commodities, information technologies and human nature.
De Joode is founder and art-director of online magazine Meta Magazine and founder and curator of the art auction house de Joode & Kamutzki.
Easter is not referring to the holiday but rather the norwegian/german pop band consisting of Stine and Max.
Both educated visual artists from the Art Academy of Malmø and the University of Art Braunschweig. Together they released their debut-album in 2011 and have been touring around Europe ever since.
Sunshine of Norway’s first member is Jan Erik Mikalsen. He is currently living in Oslo, Norway and has studied at the Grieg academy in Bergen, Norway and at the Royal Danish Music Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Mikalsen has had a number of pieces performed by orchestras, including performances and commissions by the Tokyo Filharmonic Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Oslo Sinfonietta and the Sibelius-academy symphony orchestra.
The band’s second member is Anna Daniell (1978). She is graduated from the Art Academy in Oslo, Fontys Academy of Fine Arts in Holland and the European Film College in Denmark.
Daniell has exhibited nationally and internationally, and works with sculptural projects where she examines and comments on the language of sculpture.
As an extension of Mikalsen and Daniell’s friendship they have started the musical collaboration/band named Sunshine of Norway. With them to Bergen they have brought the guitarist Arthur Olsen – who is educated within musical science at the University of Oslo. After School Special welcome Sunshine of Norway to their very first gig!
Sunshine of Norway på soundcloud
Tor Erik Bøe is a former student of the Art Academy in Tromsø, now based in Oslo. During his studies Bøe got a significant role in the art community as he frequently organized numerous of events and projects, both in the north and around the country. Frozen Heart / Freeze in Hell – The Seminar and En Kveld med Følsomme Gutter 1 & 2 (an evening with sensitive boys) are some of Bøe’s previous projects – at the moment he is working as assisting curator on the exhibition REALITY at Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo.
Apart from his curatorial practice Bøe is a visual artists who mostly work with performance and the meeting between artists – as well as other types of collaborations. It has also been said that Bøe is the muse for artists’ like Bård Ask, Børre Sæthre and Vebjørn Møllberg Guttormsgaard, as he is not afraid to be their actors/models in various pieces.
Club dance, internet aesthetics and sexuality as a cultural symbol is central themes for Bøe, and Marthe Elise Stramrud is very happy to announce that from now on the two of them will curate After School Special’s program together.
Spring program:
The Spring Program is starting to get into shape.
For the 22nd of March I am planning a very nice evening together with the talented Tor Erik Bøe, and at the same time welcoming him to After School Special. From now on he will work together with me on the project, and we already have some exciting plans! More info on Tor Erik will come later.
22nd of march:
Rachel De Joode (NL/Berlin)
Easter (NO/Berlin)
Sunshine of Norway (Anna Daniell & Jan Erik Mikalsen Oslo)
(More info will follow)
© Rachel de Joode
May 3:
“An oil painting show by Hedvig Biong”
designed structure by Audar Kantun & Joar Nedberg
(More info will follow)
© Hedvig Biong
Stay Tuned!! :-)
04.11.11
Sett i lys av alderen til kunstnerne som tidligere har gjestet After School Special er Sigmund Skard (f. 1952) vesentlig mye eldre enn de andre, fokuserer man derimot på utdannelse og karrierre stiller han likt. Skard var i utgangspunktet utdannet til lærer men etter 15 års praksis forstod han at lærerjobben ikke var noe for han og søkte seg til kunstskolen i Stavanger. I 2009 gikk han ut med en MA fra Kunstakademitet i Oslo, og har siden den gang vært svært aktiv i kunstfeltet. Skard jobber i grenselandet mellom skulptur og performance, stort sett i en minimalistisk og lavmælt form. Han henter frem nye former og egenskaper ved kjent og hverdagslig materiale. Estetikken og materialbruket til Skard minner om Fluxusbevegelsen. Spartansk og lavmælt men samtidig konseptuelt og mektig er stikkord for Skard’s performancer.
Ørjan Amundsen (f.1982) er født og oppvokst i Søgne utenfor Kristiansand hvor han opprinnelig utdannet seg til murer, nå er han førsteårsstudent ved kunstakademiet i Tromsø og på full fart inn i kunstverden. Amundsen har alltid vært musikalsk opptatt, og laget egen musikk og spilt konserter under artistnavnet Dagsrevyen. For After School Special har han slått seg sammen med Sørlandets store poet, Terje Dragseth, og under navnet OOEEE vil de sammen fremføre et musikalsk stykke som duver i et grovt, nesten pønkete landskap med musikalske referanser til Ariel Pink og John Maus.
Vi prøver å blande mye rart.
Med en grov tilnærming. Få akkorder og lite teknikk.
Punk og støy. Ja, kanskje det hadde passet å kalle det punk.
Men det blir misforstått.
Vi spiller litt reggae, litt blues, kanskje litt rap.
Det er vel ganske suggererende til tider. Repeterende.
Og patos. På norsk, på engelsk. På høgnorsk.
Paul Verlaine. Blind Willie Johnson. Gud.
Vi låner samples av Prodigy, Wayne Smith, Ric Cartey, og kanskje Wagner.
Kanskje det hjelper å si at vi er to stykker, med to vokaler, en gitar, en bass, en tromme, og som sagt, samples
- Ørjan Amundsen 27.10.11 -
Før, i mellom og etter vil den bergensbaserte DJ duoen Young Dürums spille plater. Duoen består av Mario Urban Mannsåker og Catalina Aguilera, de er glad i musikk, og mener alle sjangre har noe bra i seg, litt som mennesker. Hva de kommer til å spille er ikke godt og si, alt fra hip-hop til slow-step og 50-talls süperknüllere via 70-talls psychadelia er en vill gjetting som kan se ut til å ha stemt tidligere. En eklektisk aften med andre ord.
26.08.11
ON STAGE
KAJA CXZY ANDERSEN
HELGA WRETMAN
This time around I invited the two artists Helga Wretman and Kaja Cxzy Andersen whom both served us performative works. The artists are both born in 1985, and despite their young age they are busy on each side of the track, participating in various exhibitions and events.
The two of them are altogether quite different artists, but at the same time they seem to share a common thrive for practicing outside the natural arena their education suggests. Wretman with her education in the field of Modern and Contemporary Dance from Kungliga Svenska Balettskolan in Stockholm has performed mostly in the field if visual art while Cxzy Andersen with her formal training from Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art predominantly executes her artistic discourse on the web, in various channels such as chatroulette, skype, cam4, and various blogs
Kaja Cxzy Andersen (born and based in Norway) uses the internet to explore human intimacies and the application of intimacy through technology. She believes that the internet is an extension of human intimacy rather than a replacement of it.
“The emotional dimension of socializing on the Internet through interaction with a screen is apparent in Cxzy.biz by Kaja Cxy Andersen. The website is a blank rendition of the Facebook interface as a personal web page. This page also functions as the artist’s portfolio, where users may click through to view assemblages of .gifs, theatrical screenshots and emotive poems. In her practice, Andersen has used social networking and live chat as a way expressing internal emotions from heartbreak to frustrations with the medium while hanging out on the Internet.” - Jennifer Chan-
“A whack on the head in the “real” world can kill you, whereas a whack in one of the virtual worlds will not. …But what about my broken heart?”
- Kaja Cxzy Andersen-
Cxzy Andersen made an installation in the entrance hall of Bergen Kunsthall, for a while during the evening she executed a live chat session inside of her installation, but instead of the virtual apperance of a young boy from whenever, we experienced that she was “talking” to a computer/robot, which raises questions like reality of the virtual VS. virtual reality.
Helga Wretman (born in Stockholm, Sweden) lives and works in Berlin. Her performances has taken place in venues such as Peres Projects, Berlin; Darsa Comfort, Zurich, Kunsthalle Athena, Athens and Atelierhaus a Monbijoupark for Based in Berlin. She often performs in collaboration with other artists such as AIDS-3D, Jeremy Shaw, Donna Huanca, Peaches and Reynold Reynolds, where she almost “infiltrates” the work as a design element by placing herself and her body at the disposal of the collaborating artists like a commodity. In her autonomous individual works she also takes on the role of a marionette in a metaphorical sense, letting herself be directed by the performance around her. For After School Special she is inverting the relationship between client and performer, taking over the staging herself.
“We look at the relation between media and a sense for safety in the virtual word. In the electronic space we are all able to do almost anything and nothing can touch us. What happens to the natural sensitivity to safety and the fear of fear, our basic and ancient animal reflexes? Sometimes it seems that safety is considered uncool and boring but at the same time, contemporary safety-gear forms a futuristic and almost alien shape and transforms the person wearing it into some kind of avatar, a virtual and untouchable version of themselves. The equipment functions to improve the vulnerable human body. ” -Helga Wretman
After the show Knag Danielsen, aka DJ Knaggen played records. Knag Danielsen is a designer and visual artists based in Umeå where he is working on his Master in Visual Art.
All Photos © Margit Selsjord Bratlie
27.05.11
PÅ SCENEN
THAT PURPLE STUFF
VEBJØRN GUTTORMSGAARD MØLLBERG
CLARA MORELL
LANDMARK, BERGEN KUNSTHALL 27.05.11
Performancegruppen That Purple Stuff er både aktuelle som videokunstnere samt rene performancer laget for en scene. De har i den siste tiden vært veldig aktive med opptredner på blandt annet Dortmund Bodega (Oslo), Kunstakademiet (Oslo), Mir (Oslo), Skogssus (Kristiansand), Strange Age Art Festival (Oslo), One Night Only (Oslo), Galleri Knekt (Oslo) m.m. That Purple Stuff har vokst ut av kunstakademiet i Oslo, hvor to av medlemmene er nyeksaminerte masterstudenter, resten av medlemmene er utenfor kunstscenen. That Purple Stuff is the shit. The shit meaning not shitty at all.
Vebjørn Guttormsgaard Møllberg viste filmen Anti-Reproductive Mating Ritual (6 min) som fungerte som Møllbergs avgangsarbeid på kunstakademiet i Tromsø. Filmen er en 6 minutter lang homoerotisk skatefilm. “Skatemiljøet, som jeg kjenner godt, har det til felles med en del andre urbane miljøer, som jackass og disse, at de er veldig macho. Jeg ønsker å bringe den i dette miljøet tabubelagte homoerotikken inn”, sier Vebjørn Guttormsgaard Møllberg til avisa iTromsø. I tillegg til å lage videokunst er G. Møllberg aktuell som redaktør bak fanzinen “Kuk og Parfyme” (som forøvrig hadde slippfest på HKS tidligere denne kvelden) samt vokalist i hardcorebandet Haust.
Vebjørn i samtale med Tim Stüttgen, skribent og kunstner blant annet kjent som redaktør for antologien Post Porn Politics – The Symposium Reader (b_books, 2009).
Clara Morell er 1-års elev ved Kunstakademiet i Bergen. Hun arbeider i feltet mellom virkelighetens drømmer og drømmers virkelighet.
Videoen Local Skater handler om minner og håpet om å en dag bli den du drømmer om å være.
Kanske det inte finns mål och mening i vår färd – men vägen är ändå mödan värd.
Etter showet spilte DJ ANDY HOTPANTS plater.
SHORT ENGLISH VERSION:
The performance Group “That Purple Stuff” visits us from Oslo to gave us zany performances, Vebjørn Guttormsgaard Møllberg (graduated at the Art Academy in Tromsø) screened his video “Anti-Reproductive Material” and Clara Morell represented the art academy in Bergen when she showed her video Local skater. After the “show” DJ ANDY Hotpants filled the dancefloor.
All Photos © Margit Selsjord Bratlie
04.03.11
ON STAGE:
MIKAEL D. BRKIC
INGRID FURRE
LANDMARK, BERGEN KUNSTHALL 04.03.11
Mikael D. Brkic (born 1987) Mikael D. Brkic from Oslo, studied at Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany and the National Academy of the Arts Oslo, Norway. His practice moves with ease between different media, and his performances are often characterized by improvisation and spontaneity. In Bergen, he presented a text-based work with projections that balance between joke and earnest, entertainment and embarrassing poetry reading.
Ingrid Furre (born 1983) Ingrid Furre who is from Stavanger, Norway now lives and works in Stockholm & Malmö, Sweden. She has her education from Konstfack in Stockholm & Malmö Art Academy, Sweden and Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Norway. Her work takes shape in choreographed performances, readings, examination performance, sculptural situations and texts. For After School Special, she displayed a choreographed performance from a series of works that has the starting point in housing. The main character in the piece were played by Ami Kohara who is Japanese but lives in Sweden. Kohara do not master Swedish but has memorized the lines and performed them with precision.
After the show Dana Machajová (Czech Republic) and Catalina Aguilera (Bergen) played records. Machajová, part of Urxin Sisters based in Prague, were on a study visit to the Academy of the Arts in Bergen and together with Aguilera, known from the Chaka Puffs made a nice party behind the decks to end the night.
All Photos © Margit Selsjord Bratlie
