“Anon, to sudden silence won,

In fancy they pursue

The dream-child moving through a land

Of wonders wild and new,

In friendly chat with bird or beast –

And half believe it true.

(…)

Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:

Thus slowly, one by one,

Its quaint events were hammered out –

And now the tale is done,

And home we steer, a merry crew,

Beneath the setting sun”

- Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland, 1865

This is not a tale of Alice. But of you. The spectator.

The witness to this day and age, of stories yet unwritten.

Kristin Austreid, Bjørn Båsen and Hanne Friis are artists whose work contains layers of meaning that deal with dreamlike realities. The perception of Art can be a way of escapism and of looking into something sublime that makes you forget the present time.

The works in this show do that, but also snap you right back in an instant.

A dream within a dream.

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Kristin Austreid (b. 1985, Haugesund) has a BA and an MA from the Bergen National Academy of Arts. Austreid’s work with painting and sculpture is lingering somewhere between abstraction and figuration. She zooms in on a rope, a glass or a piece of fabric, and her exceptional attention to detail draws the viewer in. Her works give the viewer only a piece of the puzzle, and makes one think of what is happening outside of the canvas, what has happened before and what is yet to come. Austreid’s work is in the collections of Equinor Art Collection and the Collection of the City of Burgdorf.

Bjørn Båsen (b. 1981, Eggedal) has a BA from The Arts Institute at Bournemouth and an MA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Båsen’s works invite the spectator into a whole new world. His skillful perspectives make one feel as though you could take a leap and fall into his illusion of a blissful wonderland. However, in his world of porcelain puzzles, cracks are always present and propped with references to deep and often dark matters. Båsen’s oeuvre is filled with references to mythology, past and present decadence – the fairytales of former glory meet the realism of today. His work is included in the collection of the Astrup Fearnley Museum, KODE Art Museum, Bergen, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Equinor and DNB as well as numerous private collections nationally and abroad.

Hanne Friis (b. 1972, Oslo) is educated from the Art Academy in Trondheim. Friis creates tactile sculptures of carefully hand dyed textiles with pigments from natural materials such as lichen, mushrooms, acorns and other plants. This process, while time-consuming, imbues the fabric with soft, almost otherworldly yet, fundamentally organic colours. The fabrics are elaborately sewn together by hand, often to the point where one wonders what one is confronted with. Her work gives the impression of uncontrollable growth, of burgeoning, swelling, multiplying masses. Her works are abstract yet bodily, beautiful yet unsettling. She is interested in the body’s vulnerability and human mortality, but also the power and fierceness of life. Friis’ work is included in the collection of The Norwegian Government, KORO, KODE Art Museum, Bergen, The National Museum, Oslo, The Museum of Decorative Arts, Trondheim, The Art Museum of Northern Norway and The Arts Council, Norway as well as numerous private collections nationally and abroad. Friis work will be shown by Maria Wettergren Gallery at Tefaf, The European Fine Art Fair, Maastricht 2020. Currently her work is exhibited in TAMAT/ the Museum of Fine Arts in Tournai, Belgium.