Selected works: November

Artists
11/1/2022

In recent years, ceramics have gained a renewed topicality, with an increasing focus both nationally and internationally. This month we highlight four artists who approach ceramics in different ways, with an unpolished and often naive style

Nellie Jonsson →

Nellie Jonsson (b. 1992, Umeå, Sweden) is a Swedish emerging artist primarily working with ceramic sculpture and installations. She graduated from the Oslo Academy of the Arts with a BFA (2016-2019) and MFA (2019-2021) in materials-based art with a special focus on ceramics. Jonsson's figurative work communicates with an everyday tone, at the same time as unexpected compositions and elements leave a distinctive mark on the playful expression. By immortalizing common objects in clay, Jonsson throws references to consumer culture and everyday life, capturing memories around objects in our lives that we usually don't mediate over. They present a presence – an embrace of difference and personality, as well as an appreciation towards the fact that memories can be created out of the smallest of things. The objects suggest, rather than present and point to a recognizable existentialism, mixed with the unpredictable and slightly strange. Whims, distractions, memories. An honest expression, not contrived or perfected. The works highlight how we relate to the things in our surrounds over time. Even if the objects around us change, we remain the same, with similar lives, relationships, jobs and problems - the same existence.

Marthe Elise Stramrud (b. 1984, Kristiansand) lives and works in Oslo. She graduated with an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo in 2018 and a BFA from the Bergen Academy of the Arts in 2011. Stramrud has a formal background from the visual arts and has long distinguished herself as a photographer, but has in recent years continued her fascination with object and perception to produce some of the most exciting and sought-after ceramic works in Norway. She is interested in the meeting between silhouettes, backgrounds, flatness and form - between art objects and objects of use and how the boundaries between these can be opened and moved.

Ali Shah Gallefoss →

Ali Shah Gallefoss (b. 1989, Bergen) has a degree in Furniture and Spatial Design from Bergen Academy of Fine Art and Design (2018). Gallefoss has early established himself as one of Norway's foremost designers and performing craftsmen, and was quickly noticed by well-known Norwegian designers such as Holzweiler and Snøhetta. In 2019, Gallefoss created a sculpture of superfluous scarves and cuts from the stone industry for the Norwegian clothing brand Holzweiler, which was later installed at Dover Street Market in Beijing. In 2020, he was selected to exhibit as part of Norwegian Presence 2020 at Salon Satelite in Milan. The same year he also won Bo Bedre's design award as the year's newcomer. In 2021, he worked with Snøhetta to create Holzweiler's new store in his hometown of Bergen and was later chosen to curate a jewelry exhibition for Oslo Fushion Festival called "Abstract Landscape" where he produced a number of works in stone, bronze, aluminum, glass and textile.

Andrea Scholze (b. 1988, Oslo) is educated at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (BFA, 2011, MFA, 2016). Scholze works sculpturally and on installation pieces, primarily using ceramics. Her works are roughly modelled with an expressive, often bleak look. She creates scenographic installations of often dystopian landscapes where her individual sculptures of human-like species often looking more like trolls, golems or yetis, channel emotions and tell stories. She is interested in how both animals and humas exist together in today’s society and themes such as loneliness, existentialism and belonging are apparent in many of her sculptures.