Plattform invites to a conversation between Mari Slaattelid and Gunnar Danbolt, in connection with the Festival Exhibition 2019 «Kystverket» by Slaattelid.
The conversation will be in Norwegian
Free entry.
Mari Slaattelid´s exhibition “Kystverket” consists almost exclusively of new works created especially for the galleries of Bergen Kunsthall. The title reflects the main motif in many of the new paintings: a coastal landscape with a lantern (navigation marker) and – in silhouette against the sky – an operator adjusting the light signal. With clear resonance in its geographical location on the coast of southwestern Norway, the exhibition can be seen as a site-specific response to the expectations and the format of the Festival Exhibition. Throughout this extensive series of paintings, which use variations of the same theme, Slaattelid explores a wide-ranging painterly vocabulary. The motif – where an object in nature becomes an anthropomorphic signal emitter – is something she shares with colleagues from the history of art, such as August Strindberg and Peder Balke in Nordic painting. The distinctive triangular shape of the lantern, as an alien element in the landscape, in combination with the male figure placed high above ground level, is an iconic juxtaposition, transcendental and at the same time utterly prosaic.
Mari Slaattelid studied at the academies of art in Bergen, Oslo and Düsseldorf. She lives and works in Oslo. Her previous exhibitions include among others STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo; Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo; National Museum, Oslo; Linköping konsthall, Linköping; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Bærum; Stavanger Kunstmuseum; Statens Museum for Kunst, København; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; CAC, Vilnius; Malmö Kunstmuseum, Malmö; and Galleria d´Arte Moderna Bologna, Bologna.
Gunnar Danbolt is a Norwegian art historian, focusing on art theory and art pedagogy as his specialties. Since 1972 he was working at the University of Bergen, where he became a professor of European art history in 1984. He was a board member of the National Gallery of Norway from 1983 to 1987, the Norwegian Museum of Contemporary Art from 1994 and of the Arts Council Norway from 1992 to 1996. He was decorated with the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav in 2007.
Please join us also for a Plattform event with Sigrun Åsebø on 10 August at 14:00.
Plattform is Bergen Kunsthall’s lecture series connected to our exhibition programme and wider contemporary debates. Supported by Fritt Ord.