Sparebankstiftelsen DNBs stipendutstilling 2022

Oslo Kunstforening is pleased to welcome you to Sparebankstiftelsen DNB's Grant Exhibition 2022. This year's exhibitors are Oslo-based artists Kim Hankyul, Jacky Jaan-Yuan Kuo, and Lesia Vasylchenko.

Oslo Kunstforening is happy to present Kim Hankyul as the recepient of Sparebankstiftelsen DNB's grant 2022 for his kinetic sound installation AV Buddha (2022).

Jury statement: "An extraordinary technical achievement, the work is equally complex conceptually, sonically, and aesthetically. At once moving and disquieting, it transforms neglected stories of the Korean war into an uncanny mechanical and musical symphony, reflecting at the same time on the cacophony of contemporary acceleration online media culture. While dealing with the unresolved history of Korea, AV Buddha also points to the mediated character of modern conflicts more widely. It is a deeply affecting anti-monument to those lives which continue to be marginalized in collective memory."

The grant exhibition is being held at Oslo Kunstforening for the fifteenth time, an event that has become an important institution in Norway’s art scene over the years. To date,18 artists have received grants and 69 artists have participated in the exhibition. A jury of art professionals is responsible for both the nominations and the final judging, and the grant recipient is announced at the opening. 

Oslo Kunstforening is proud of the collaboration with Sparebankstiftelsen DNB on this annual exhibition, which is much more than a competition for a grant. The grant exhibition has developed into an important platform for introducing exciting artistic practices, both established and emerging, to a wider public. 

On November 26th at 2 PM there will be a conversation between the artists and jury member Mike Sperlinger, curator and professor of writing practice at Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

The nominated artists

The nominees in this year's exhibition are Kim Hankyul (b. 1990, South Korea), Jacky Jaan-Yuan Kuo (b. 1994, Taiwan), and Lesia Vasylchenko (b. 1990, Ukraine). Despite different approaches, they have in common that they present powerful analyses of the contemporary world. Their work addresses a wide range of themes – from familial relationships and religious rituals in Jacky Jaan-Yuan Kuo's installation All the Time, via media handling and grief processes in light of the Korean War in Kim Hankyul's kinetic sculpture AV Buddha, to connections between nuclear technology and climate in Lesia Vasylchencko's No One Will Stop the Wind – through sculpture, photography, and video.

The jury

The jury for the period 2018-2022 consists of jury leader Behzad Farazollahi, visual artist and founder of MELK; Randi Grov Berger, curator and head of Entrée; Marianne Hultman, director of Nordnorsk kunstnersenter and former leader of Oslo Kunstforening; Mike Sperlinger, writer, curator, and professor in writing practice at Oslo National Academy of the Arts and Elise Storsveen, visual artist. Elisabeth Byre is the new leader of Oslo Kunstforening and replaced Hultman as a jury member in August 2022.

The grant

The annual grant exhibition has been organized by Oslo Kunstforening since 2008 with support from Sparebankstiftelsen DNB. Previous grant recipients are Anne Haugsgjerd (2021), Berivan Erdogan, Hanni Kamaly and Kjetil Skøien (2020), Germain Ngoma (2019), Eirik Sæther (2018), Emilija Škarnulytė (2017), Tor Børresen (2016), Andrea Bakketun and Christian Tony Norum (2015), Ingrid Lønningdal (2014), Sandra Mujinga (2013), Marie Buskov (2012), Kaia Hugin (2011), Ann Cathrin November Høibo (2010), Ignas Krunglevičius (2009) and Ellisif Hals and Susanne Skeide (2008).

Kim Hankyul

Kim Hankyul's work AV Buddha (2022), is an extensive kinetic sound installation in the form of a Buddha figure. Archive material on the horrors of the Korean War is presented on small mobile screens that make up the Buddha's face. The contrast between the spiritual and the mechanical is central: in the black-and-white films, we are confronted with marginalized groups that history has overlooked, while the Buddha figure is brought to life in a mechanical symphony, only to then fall silent. Hankyul links the work to the contemporary mediation of disasters and mass death, where the short time horizon in social media leaves no room for slow and more time-consuming processes such as grief. The title AV Buddha refers to the iconic work TV Buddha (1974) by the South Korean artist Nam June Paik, which, among other things, thematizes the relationship between East and West, religion and media society, surveillance and control.

Jacky Jaan-Yuan Kuo

Jacky Jaan-Yuan Kuo shows the installation All the Time (2022), where the relationship between the private and the family is juxtaposed with religious rituals and everyday objects. The installation shows five structures that resemble box mattresses leaning against the wall while also reminding of cabinets, which refers to modular Buddhist and Taoist altars common in modern homes in Taiwan - the artist's homeland. Resting on shelves in the structures are various objects linked to a family's religious rituals, among which contact with the ancestors is central. The cupboards, five in all, one for each family member, can be seen as interfaces between two worlds: one here and now, and one hereafter.

Lesia Vasylchenko

Lesia Vasylchenko presents the work No One Will Stop the Wind (2022), an installation with sculptures, photographs, and video that explores how nuclear technology affects the planet. Two sculptures are made of clay and trinitite, a glass formed by the heat from the world's first nuclear test, in New Mexico in 1945. The material is both a kind of historical witness and an object that will last for many thousands of years to come. Three large photographs, with massive frames of clay, are entitled A-images. The A refers to atomic shadows from the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, and the images show black fields with faint renderings of shadows. These are frightening indications of how the last images of Earth may one day turn out. The video shows images from a surveillance camera of the Russian attack on Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine, on March 3rd, 2022, an attack whose full consequences remain unknown.