QB seeks to highlight artistic practices for the November selection that explore unconventional sculptures and installations. This includes works that experiment with unusual materials, challenge traditional forms and scales. The themes often go beyond just the visual aspect for the viewer, with artists pushing the boundaries of what a sculpture can be and exploring new ways to represent ideas and concepts. It’s about thinking outside the box and creating something that prompts the audience to question the role and function of art, while fostering a deeper dialogue between the artwork and the viewer.

Tor Erik Bøe (b. 1986, NO) is educated at the Tromsø Academy of Fine Art. He primarily works with sculpture, video, and performance. With a genre-defying approach, Bøe creates connections between the ordinary and the extraordinary within social spaces. Recently, he has explored this theme through sculptures featuring receipts from his own purchases, printed on PVC. These receipts function as memory maps, listing the artist's transactions while also pointing to a consumerist culture. Bøe lives and works in Norway and France.

Sara-Lovise Ask Ewertson (b. 1991, Norway) is an artist based in Oslo. She holds a BA from the Swedish School of Textiles in Borås and an MA from Konstfack in Stockholm.

Ask’s interdisciplinary artistic practice spans textile sculpture, installation, drawing, and digital textile representation. Working with textiles in this non-traditional manner has become a distinctive direction in her practice. Her work is dedicated to raising awareness of the textile industry's connection to climate change. Her goal is to explore the state of society, where the majority of textile knowledge is distant from those who consume it the most.

Her work has been exhibited at Röhsska Museum, ArkDes, Umeå Konsthall, Nässjö Konsthall, 3

våningen, BO, Podium, Spriten Kunsthall, Soft Galleri, among others. Ask is currently preparing for her upcoming solo exhibition at Bærum Kunsthall in February 2025.

Yngve Benum (b. 1984, Oslo) creates work characterized by an explosive energy that remains fully controlled. His paintings are, if not overloaded, at least packed with so many elements that one might imagine the canvases nearly bursting at times. His motifs often feature a recurring cast of figures, but above all, they seem to represent a constant exploration of form while being anchored in a clearly recognizable signature. This signature is particularly evident in some of the most structured surfaces in contemporary Norwegian painting, with an unusual range of techniques in how the paint is applied to the canvas, along with—pardon the non-technical term—quirky effects. This quality is one of the standout features of his work.

Despite the art world’s continuous expansion and its push into new directions, we paradoxically live in a time where art has become highly predictable. Benum’s work trends toward maximalism and a desire to avoid getting stuck in rigid patterns. It’s rare to encounter something unexpected, something that defies understanding or can be described as quirky. Benum’s paintings, however, do just that—they hit you in the face with their originality, presenting something unique that no one else in the Norwegian art scene is doing. His work convincingly argues that painting will become far more interesting in the next decade than it has been in the last.

Sidsel Bonde (b. 1992, DK) graduated from the Bergen Academy of Art (MA, 2019) and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (BA, 2015). She works with installation, sculpture, and printmaking. A recurring theme in her artistic practice is the relationship between cultural heritage and landscape. Bonde often focuses on the transformations an environment undergoes over time and how these changes can be seen as reflections of social structures. In her works, she employs materials such as leather, plaster, concrete, wood, straw, and textiles, often connected to specific locations.

Bonde has participated in art biennials like the IJsselBiennale in Holland (2023) and the OpenArt Sculpture Biennial in Sweden (2022), as well as having solo exhibitions at institutions such as Norske Grafikere in Oslo, Spriten Kunsthall in Skien, and Østfold Kunstsenter in Fredrikstad. She lives and works in Denmark and Norway.

Morten Jensen Vågen (b. 1987, Haugesund, NO) is a graduate of the Oslo Academy of Fine Art.

Vågen works with performative video and sculpture. Visually, his focus is on urban spaces, exploring themes like popular culture and surveillance. In his sculptures, Vågen highlights everyday objects found in urban environments: a surveillance room disguised as a pile of planks or a stack of bricks, a still life of seemingly discarded trash and objects commonly seen in cityscapes, or inverted scenes such as 500-kroner bills made from found paper and dried coffee. In his video works, the process behind the piece or its function is emphasized, often presented like an instruction manual. Many of his works claim ownership of urban spaces and challenge ideas of value within a capitalist society.

Vågen’s work has been acquired by Oslo Kommunes Kunstsamling and the Haugaland Mu

Lin Wang (b. 1985, CN) is educated at the Bergen Academy of Art and the China Art Academy. She primarily works with sculpture, installation, and performance, incorporating various media such as food, sound, scent, and tattoos. Her interdisciplinary practice focuses on how art can use innovative approaches and platforms to penetrate contemporary personal and social spheres. Many of Wang's works explore how the West has historically both exchanged and exploited its position to facilitate trade with the East. In her long-term project "Exotic Dreams and Poetic Misunderstandings," begun in 2016, Wang uses porcelain installations, performance, and various other media as a basis for stories about the meeting between East and West. In the project's second phase, titled "Still Life," she addresses the still life's portrayal of transience and beauty, themes that have fascinated people for centuries, particularly the message that nothing lasts forever.

Wang's works are included in numerous public and private collections, including the National Museum, the Nordenfjeldske Museum of Decorative Arts, and the Oslo Municipal Art Collection. Wang lives and works in Oslo.

Anne Guro Larsmon (b. 1981) is a Norwegian artist based in Oslo and Los Angeles. She holds a BFA from the Bergen National Academy of the Arts (NO) and graduated with an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2013.

Larsmon has previously worked as a TA for Charles Caines. Her past exhibitions include the Sculpture Biennale at the Vigeland Museum (NO), Jace Place (US), Houseguest (US), Twentynine Palms (US), Michael Thibault Gallery (LA), Kunstnernes Hus (NO), Kunstnerforbundet (NO), NoPlace (NO), Billedhoggerforeningen (NO), IAC Malmö (SE), Charlottenborg Kunsthal (DEN), and Sixtyeight Art Institute (DEN). In 2016, she was awarded the Autumn Exhibition Prize from the Artists' Assistance Fund (BKH). Her works have been acquired by INK and are part of the collection at KODE, Bergen Art Museum.

Kaare Ruud (b. 1993, Gausdal) is educated at the Oslo Academy of Fine Art (MFA) and the Bergen Academy of Art (BFA).

Ruud's sculptures often take inspiration from everyday utilitarian objects, which he elevates, transforms, and imbues with new elements. The viewer is made to feel small when confronted with his gigantic tables and chairs, while his distinctive garden hose sculptures coil through spaces, with spouts that resemble snakes, dripping and spraying water. Ruud masterfully elevates the possibilities of the ordinary within art—sometimes leaving objects as they are, other times refining them with luxurious materials like bronze. He gives commonplace figurative objects an abstract and complex visual language, making him an exciting talent within the younger generation of Norwegian contemporary art.

Sandra Vaka (b. 1980, Stavanger) is educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (MFA, 2011) and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (BA, 2006).

She primarily works with photography, sculpture, and installation. Through a conceptual approach to photography, Vaka juxtaposes seemingly incompatible elements, such as water and technology, the eternal and the ephemeral. Her work explores how human perception, the body, and identity are altered in an ever-changing reality and nature. With both humor and seriousness, Vaka examines everyday objects associated with the body, such as towels, straws, and screens, while referencing desire, consumption, and pleasure that characterize today's consumer society.

Vaka's works are included in numerous public collections, including the Stavanger Art Museum, KORO (Art in Public Space), the Danish Arts Foundation, and the Nordic Contemporary Art Collection (NOCO) in Sweden. Vaka lives and works in Stavanger and Berlin.