Behold

BEHOLD

22.09.23 -19.11.23

Cathrine Maske, Eirin Bjørsland Hansen, Julie Shirani Kausland, Karen Klim, Kari Håkonsen, Peter Sutton and Vidar Koksvik.

For the exhibition Behold we have invited Kari Håkonsen and Vidar Koksvik to curate an exhibition, which also includes their own works.

The foundation of Kari Håkonsen and Vidar Koksvik’s practice is blown, craft glass, where the material’s inherent properties also play a central role. Acquiring and developing technical skills has for them been a key element in expressing themselves as artists. The American glass artist Harvey Littleton said in the 60s that “Technique is cheap”, he believed that an artist was freer when technique did not get in the way. For Kari and Vidar it has been the opposite, technique has made them free to say what they want with the material. In this exhibition, they have invited a bunch of artists with the same approach to their art.

Behold shows works that “retain” something  in different ways, whether it is the shape of a vessel, interpretations of an original function or objects that utilize the glass’s abilities to play with light and color. What all the artists have in common is that they are eager to know their material to the full and to investigate the possibilities of glass. But at the same time, they also want to investigate what potential lies in something as basic as a corpus, jar, vessel or other container.

Although all the works relate to retaining in different ways, the expressions are many and varied. In Cathrine Maske’s latest series “Glasslaboratoriet” we find a combination of blown, freehand shaped glass and found glass elements from the chemical industry. The translucent glass sculptures contrast with the exquisite color gradation in Eirin Bjørsland Hansen’s “Phoenix”, which the curators describe as both a masterpiece and as eye candy. Peter Sutton’s glass work is often part of an architectural context where the glass contributes to adding color to the light and playing with light and shadow. For this exhibition, he is creating a completely new site-specific wall work, based on the vessel shape, as part of his residency in S12.

Behold is a continuation of the exhibition project I & We which was shown in S12 in 2022, BWA Wroclaw, Poland 2023 and Rona Gallery, Lednicke Rovne, Slovakia 2023, and continues to build on our desire to showcase Norwegian glass art.

In connection with the exhibition, there will be a “hands on” seminar, consisting of demonstrations in the workshop, as well as artist talks both in the workshop and in the project room. Using a practical approach, the seminar will convey how the works in the exhibition were produced, and through interviews/conversations, perhaps also answer why the works in the exhibition have seen the light of day? It is the artists participating in the exhibition who will contribute to the content of the seminar. 

Photo: Øystein Klakegg