Studio Report #6: Nikhil Vettukattil – Amnesia (Synapse Fires)

Friday 28th-Sunday 30th January 2022
Please join us for the opening Thursday 27th January 6-8pm

Kunsthall Oslo is very pleased to present a new project by the Oslo-based artist Nikhil Vettukattil, the six and last iteration of our current series of Studio Reports.

“A father had been watching day and night beside the sick-bed of his child. After the child died, he retired to rest in an adjoining room, but left the door ajar so that he could look from his room into the next, where the child’s body lay surrounded by tall candles. An old man, who had been installed as a watcher, sat beside the body, murmuring prayers. After sleeping for a few hours the father dreamed that the child was standing by his bed, clasping his arm and crying reproachfully: Father, don’t you see that I am burning? The father woke up and noticed a bright light coming from the adjoining room. Rushing in, he found that the old man had fallen asleep, and the sheets and one arm of the beloved body were burnt by a fallen candle.” (from The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud)

Nikhil Vettukattil is an artist based in Oslo. Their practice is concerned with the role of representation and image-making processes in framing lived experience and mediating historical memory. Vettukattil is currently exhibiting as part of Le Club du Poisson-Lune at CAPC, Bordeaux and It’s Just a Phase, at K-U-K, Trondheim. Forthcoming projects include exhibitions at Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, and Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo later in 2022.

Works in exhibition (all works 2022):

Amnesia (John Abraham, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Kaul, Pandit Pran Naath, Raj Kapoor and Govindan Aravindan.)
Single channel HD video, 34 min

Memory Screen
Acrylic on linen, 220 x 165cm

Infrastructure
Spatial arrangement of patio heaters with timed sequence

Agarbatti
Incense, mirrors