The exhibition opens Thursday the 20th of November from 6-8 pm

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The exhibition ‘A Body of Work’ aims to investigate three different artists’ use of ornamentation, traditional handicrafts, the physical object and the human body in their work. Lars Korff Lofthus, Olve Sande and Marthe Elise Stramrud all have a unique approach into these topics, and a body of work that reaches far beyond the focus of this exhibition. Through various cross sections of the traditional then and the contemporary now, their works allow us to to reflect on the very idea of the “traditional” and how it fades and reappears in new guises over time.

There is a sensual abundance pouring out of Lars Korff Lofthus' works, creating the baseline for a world of lust where our assumptions around tradition, sexuality and gender are tossed around and rearranged. In his works, sensuous curves, vivid colours and broad brushstrokes -insisting and fleeting at the same time, forms traditional Norwegian wooden interiors, Norwegian landscapes and Rubens-like full male bodies onto the canvas. In Korff Lofthus’ large-scale paintings, we are drawn into a world resembling a dream, a world inhabiting different layers of time and space, where the colours and the brushstrokes leave us drifting and grounded at the same time. Although the most understated and minimal of Korff Lofthus’ works in the exhibition, Ghost Bed is the work that speaks loudest of the sensuous nerve in his brushstrokes. Looking at the old traditional Norwegian wooden bed painted with white on greyish shades of brown, we drift into the strokes, and into the painting. We are transported into a cold room, so cold that you can see your own breath in the air. Chills move down your limbs as you sense an invisible presence, not from present time, maybe never present in time at all.

40 krukker for 40 dager by Marthe Elise Stramrud is represented in the exhibition with 8 playfully and vividly painted clay jars, 5 of them placed systematically on a wood and brick bench. Through specific objects and materials with rural and tactile qualities, the bench installation generates a warm and grounding sensation, like the comfort of a home. Where the jars embody the traditional feminine sphere connected to the labour inside the house, full of life and nourishment, the benches of brick and wood have a more protective role; constructed by hand and safeguarding what’s inside, embodying more traditional masculine traits. In this sense the work talks of labour, of hard physical work, of bodywork. Inspired by an old Scandinavian tradition of care, where women from the village would bring jars with food and other remedies to a new mother, a tradition that is no longer alive today although the need is still present, 40 krukker for 40 dager exist in a crossing point between feminist and political art, installation art, traditions of patterns and decorations, drawing on lines from the post minimalist movement with references to iconic works like The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago. Strongly rooted in the present as well as the past, touching on the personal and the collective, the work gives us an opportunity to reflect on gender roles, the role of a home, and a community – changing and adapting over time.

There is something insisting and almost violent – simultaneously mysterious and fleeting – in the shapes and patterns that fill the surface of Olve Sande’s series of paintings Svalroser. More than noticing the outline of flowers, we see the brush moving paint across the surface. More than registering visual repetition, we sense something erupting and pushing through – the re-emergence of the hand as a formative force. The movements carry a sense of release, as if a long-held restraint has been lifted and the hand is allowed to act with full physical presence. In Svalroser, the reference to rose painting – a form of decorative painting historically used on everyday wooden objects – becomes a reflective point of departure rather than a stylistic shift. It brings forward a connection between gesture, material and site that has been implicit in his previous work and reopens an understanding of painting as inseparable from the surface it is made on, where image and support form a mutual dependency. Decorative painting, historically bound to the contours of everyday wooden objects, offers a reminder of a moment when painting formed a temporal and material relationship to place. In this light, Svalroser uses this tradition to expose the forces at work within painting itself: the liberated movement of the hand, the grounding of the work in its physical setting, and the emancipating potential that arises when painting is shaped by direct, embodied gesture rather than detached control.