Young Pioneers

9. mai-19. juni 2015
Velkommen til åpning 8. mai kl. 19

An exhibition of new art from Oslo, with works by
ALBUM (Eline Mugaas and Elise Storsveen)
Ragna Bley
Kristian Øverland Dahl
Anders Holen
Benjamin Alexander Huseby
Ellen Jacobsen
Signe Arnborg Løvaas
Mercedes Mühleisen
Janne Paulsen
Willibald Storn
Jon Benjamin Tallerås
Kjell Varvin

Oslo is not yet well known by the world. As the global competition between cities intensifies, we risk being left behind. We need to respond.

The good news is that the City of Oslo and the Oslo Business Region will launch a new Brand Management Strategy in June, and Oslo will now become Young and Pioneering. Kunsthall Oslo, among many other key Oslo leaders, has been invited to join this collective effort towards the common purpose of developing and demonstrating Oslo’s new values through appropriate and aligned actions.

In this connection, Kunsthall Oslo is pleased to present Young Pioneers, an exhibition of new art from Oslo that touches on themes of urban architecture, performance and identity, alongside a presentation of historical photographs and documents from the Norwegian Communist youth, the Unge Pionerer.

With the exhibition Young Pioneers, Kunsthall Oslo is investing in image, identity and reality in order to become more visible and better appreciated internationally. The exhibition will feel real, be pioneering, be enriching, be future oriented and speak the language of the younger generations. The best is yet to come.

Photograph: Benjamin Alexander Huseby, 2014

ALBUM (Eline Mugaas & Elise Storsveen)
Since 2008, Oslo-based artists Storsveen and Mugaas have been sifting through printed material found in Scandinavian households from the 1960s through the 1980s then combining the visual matter into a fanzine, or limited edition, saddle-stich publication. Photographs and illustrations printed in a range of media from cookbooks, travel journals and etiquette manuals to fashion magazines, sexual manuals, and gardening and science journals are taken from original sources, juxtaposed, and reproduced as photo essays in fanzine format. The publications are free of text. Each issue of ALBUM is dedicated to particular themes such as the lonely man, femininity, architecture, family, outer space, and nature. Here, consumerism, popular culture and domesticity seamlessly converge, reinforcing the fluidity and exchange among everyday life and onslaught of advertising and news media images.

Ragna Bley
The painting With Bancroft on Taha’a (2014) is part of a series inspired by a journey to Tahiti and the Society Islands in French Polynesia. Ragna Bley (b. 1986 Uppsala, Sweden) lives and works in Oslo and London. Her recent exhibitions include The Foyer Exhibition, Kunstnernes hus 2014; What Thinks Me, Taiga Art Space, St Petersburg 2014; We met at the far end of the landscape and both acted shy, Grünerløkka Kunsthall & Podium, Oslo 2014; Read Your Call, Gallery Diane Kruse, Hamburg 2014; WIP, Henry Moore Gallery, London 2014; Summer Doldrums, Kunsthall Oslo, 2013; Leather Body—Feather Scope, LNM Oslo, 2013. Bley graduated from the Oslo National Academy of Art in 2013 and is currently taking a master degree at the Royal College of Art in London.

Kristian Øverland Dahl
Dahl’s Familie (2008) was first exhibited at the Astrup Fearnley Museum in 2008. Dahl (b. 1968, Asker) has had solo exhibitions at Holodeck, Soft Gallery, GAD, TRAFO, Gallery Van Bau, UKS and presented his work at the Biennale of Sydney, Stavanger kunstforening, LNM, Pink Cube, CAC Vilnius, Vestfossen Art Laboratory and Tidens Krav. He is also a member of the artists group D.O.R. and has exhibited with them as Kunsthal Charlottenborg, FRAC Quimper, The Armory Show 2012, The 54th Venice Biennale and Witte de With, Rotterdam.

Anders Holen
Statue of Regression #5 (2015) and Aid for Impending Quagmire #3 & #5 (2014) continue the series that of works that Holen presented in his recent exhibition at the artist-run space Helper Projects in Brooklyn, with a plaster sculpture accompanied by the handmade tools (small sculptures themselves) used to fashion it. Anders Holen (b.1986, Skien, lives and works in Oslo) graduated from the Oslo National Academy of Arts in 2010. Holen’s work has also been shown in the exhibitions Paraphernalia at Telemark Kunstnersenter, Skien; Now, usually I don’t do this, but uh… at Grunerløkka Kunsthall; Monsalvat at Bureau, New York and Betweenuscolada at Rake Gallery, Trondheim. He was also one of the founding members of the artist-run gallery Tidens Krav.

Benjamin Alexander Huseby
The Stuntwoman I & II, 2015
Dutch stuntwoman Vanessa Wieduwilt photographed for the magazine The Gentlewoman. Styled by Hannes Hetta, make up by Christian Fritzenwanker and hair by Christian Eberhard.

Ellen Jacobsen
Sketch for workers’ monument, no date.
Ellen Jacobsen (b.1945 Drammen) lives and works in Oslo. She studied at the National Academy of Arts under Per Palle Storm and her work has been widely exhibited in Norway. In Oslo she is perhaps best known for the bronze sculpture Factory Girls, 1986 on Beyerbrua, a monument to the novelist Oscar Braaten. (Note: Unfortunately necessary repairs to Ellen Jacobsen’s sculpture will not be completed in time for the work to be in place at the opening; it will join the exhibition on Wednesday 13th May).

Signe Arnborg Løvaas
Slakt, 2014
Menn og Gutt, 2015
Signe Arnborg Løvaas (b.1989, lives and works in Oslo) works with collage, drawing and video, and lists her artistic interests as loneliness, cruelty and mental disorder. In her recent works Arnborg Løvaas also uses herself as the subject of her explorations. She graduated from the MFA at Kunstfag, Oslo in 2014 and has exhibited at Akerhus Kunstsenter; Det norske teatret; Galleri 69 and Galleri Skinnpels, Oslo, and Billedhoggerforengingen, Oslo, with the group Penetrators.

Mercedes Mühleisen
Lament of Fruitless Hen, 2014
Mercedes Mühleisen works with sculpture, installation or video, often presented with three-dimensional tableaus, or stage sets. Lament of Fruitless Hen was originally presented as an installation work at Blokk, Bergen. Mühleisen (b. 1983, lives and works in Oslo) has exhibited her at The Turku Biennial; Five Thousand Generations of Birds, Fitjar; Kunstschlager, Reykjavik and The Armory Show, New York, among places. She was co-founder of the artist run gallery Tidens Krav in Oslo.

Janne Paulsen
Tower of Dreams, 2015
Portal, 2015
Staircase, 2015
Janne Paulsen’s photogravure prints of dream-architecture are made from photographs of her own wood and plaster sculptures. Paulsen studied at Oslo University (1970-5) and Oslo Tegne og Maleskole (1988-91). She is a member of the Norske Grafikeres Verksted (Norwegian Graphic Artists Workshop) in Oslo, and has shown her work at NGV; Galleriverkstedet, Oslo; and Waages hus, Farsund, among other places.

Willibald Storn
From the Berlinersuite, 2012-4
The Berlinersuite is a series of digital prints made using Storn’s own photographs of Berlin walls. Willibald Storn (b. 1938, Austria, lives and works in Oslo) trained as a baker before moving to Oslo where he attended the National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in 1957. He is one of Norway’s best-known artists, his work is represented in the collection of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo and was recently seen as part of the exhibition Krigens Skygge at Kunstnernes hus.

Jon Benjamin Tallerås
Oppmerksomhetsfelt (encoded, stored and retrieved), 2015
Jon Benjamin Tallerås (b. 1984, Oslo, Norway) graduated from Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2011. Tallerås works with a variety of media to investigate urban space, exploring hidden and often non-used areas of the city. His work has been shown at Akershus Kunstsenter, Høstutstilling and in the Sparebankstiftelse DNB Art Award exhibition, and will be included in the forthcoming LIAF biennial in Lofoten. Parallel with his artistic practice Tallerås is one of the initiators and curators of the project space One Night Only Gallery.

Kjell Varvin
Unstable Variable 29th April, 2015
Kjell Varvin makes and photographs new sculptural constructions in his studio every day, experimenting with a vast collection of geometric forms in wood, welded  steel, aluminium, glass and perspex to create more or less temporary arrangements. Varvin studied at the National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in Oslo and his work has been widely exhibited in Norway, including recently at LYNX, Oslo; Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo; in the Norwegian Sculpture Biennial and at Momentum: The Nordic Biennial in Moss.

Kunsthall Oslo is supported by The Norwegian Arts Council, OSU, HAV and The City of Oslo.