Sparebankstiftelsen DNBs stipendutstilling 2018

Welcome to the grant exhibition 2018! Oslo Kunstforening and The Savings Bank Foundation DNB have the pleasure of presenting an exhibition with new traits. For the first time, three artists (previously five) are invited to produce new works for the annual group exhibition. The exhibition will take place at Oslo Kunstforening for the eleventh year in a row.

The three participating artists in this year’s edition are Beathe C. Rønning, Eirik Sæther and Ayatgali Tuleubek.

The Savings Bank Foundation DNB art grant is awarded Eirik Sæther for the installation Father's Figure (2018). Sæther recieves a 200.000 NOK art grant.

The jury leader is Sabrina van der Ley, Stiftelsen Sør-Troms Museum. The remaining members are Jan Christensen, visual artist; Marianne Hultman, OK artistic director, Steffen Håndlykken, visual artist and co-director, 1857 and Arve Rød, critic and art writer.

Beathe C. Rønning

Both of Beathe C. Rønning’s works deal with the state of being overwhelmed, or rather, unconscious strategies to deal with this state.

Modes, mechanisms and expectations of staying up-to-date have changed dramatically in recent years. The pressure put upon our sensory system has increased to unrealistic extremes.

To crave information is innate. For instance, when well-informed one can anticipate what might occur, or so we believe. This is not something we do solely on an individual basis; the need for control is exerted on both a social and species level. For this reason it can seem threatening, perhaps inappropriate, for someone to deliberately withdraw from this information seeking hunt.

But what if it is one’s own subconscious that withdraws, as if to protect itself from becoming overwhelmed. This is the basis for the series Antidrama, which is comprised of aesthetically composed cuttings from dramatic newspaper images. They’ve emerged from a withdrawal from information and towards beauty, composition and colour. In the work Solution. The night of February 1st: It was too hard, as someone said to me. No problem, I said, we’ll just hang up some pillows the subconscious takes control by suggesting an almost comical solution to a life crisis.

Eirik Sæther

In Eirik Sæther’s installation Father’s Figure we find ourselves in a staged environment consisting of a house constructed out of found materials from hotels and high-end fashion stores. On the outside of the house there are partly collapsed piggy-banks thatched with torn cans on islets made up of something that looks like ashes. Hanging on the wall, are two silk-screen prints titled Den mørke gaven (meaning a gift with strings attached). They both present the image of a hand with a smiling child’s face behind bars, the character is known from the child’s TV show Baby Jake. When entering the house one discovers the rear of a set where a flat screen is showing a scene between father and son. The son is reciting a short story, seemingly written by himself, with constant interjections from the father whose gestures and language recall authoritarian leaders from politics and popular culture. The video thus suggests a patriarch in a state of collapse.

Ayatgali Tuleubek

How does one interact with surrounding infrastructures? This question requires us to query the degrees of freedom that technology provides, or inversely, the boundaries it imposes on our daily lives. When we encounter disciplines of knowledge and authority, ranging from genetic engineering to biotech taking root in the body, we are challenged both to search for new modes of engagement and also to develop functional new ethical responses.

The installation The gut is the second brain approaches those instances wherein technology, with the purpose of conserving life and well-being, crawls under the skin and deep into the flesh. It is a matter of the body becoming an arena in which different visions of the future come into play that challenge the definition of the human. It is also a probe into the blurring of both mind-body and technological-biological dualisms.

Background

Since 1986 Oslo Kunstforening has awarded artists, with the kind support of Sparebanken Oslo og Akershus.

Since 2008, The DNB Savings Bank Foundation and Oslo Kunstforening have awarded grants to Ellisif Hals and Susanne Skeide (2008), Ignas Krunglevičius (2009), Ann Cathrin November Høibo (2010), Kaia Hugin (2011), Marie Buskov (2012), Sandra Mujinga (2013), Ingrid Lønningdal (2014), Andrea Bakketun and Christian Tony Norum (2015), Tor Børresen (2016) and Emilija Škarnulytė (2017).