24 Fine Arts students present their works

The master exhibition, «with eyes closed, call me», started of this Friday in Bergen´s Kunsthall. Here 24 Fine Art students from different countries will be presenting their art works from 12th of April to the 6th of May.

The installations reveal the artist´s visions in the five different spaces with different themes such as «Abstractions in Material Forms» and «Memories, Personal Histories and Collective Narratives».

Looked after by the British curator

The whole exhibition is curated by the British artist Eva Rowson. She has studied Fine Art herself in Leeds and started her journey with art by joining different art collectives and organising exhibition, gigs and events.

– It´s quite an international group of artists, says Rowson.

She made the exhibition in collaboration with the students. The exhibition marks the end of their two years of studies, where they have been developing their individual art practices.

– It is quite difficult to curate an exhibition like this, since you have to bring together 24 different people in the Kunsthall where space is quite limited, says Rowson.

– My interest is thinking about how to collaborate; how do we share the space, negotiate and work together in the best way.

She started organising one day with this in mind and each of the student had to respond to words like «collaboration», «equality», «exhibition», «documentation» and «participation». In this way the students got a chance to say what these words meant for each of them personally.

– We spent a lot of time on sharing the different artist practice and how they could fit together in these exhibition spaces, explains Rowson.

5 rooms and 5 themes

– Each of the gallery spaces is organised indifferent themes as a way of bringing together these really different practices, from sculptures to paintings and photography, into one space and to give them a focus point, explains Rowson.

The themes in these five rooms are showing how history is made, who’s voices and stories are acknowledged. One room is about how do you develop knowledge through experience in your life, while another room is about students interested in truth, fiction and drama.

One of the rooms features four artists that worked with different kinds of support structures, both physical and emotional support. The room on the picture below consists of artists who worked with different processes and experimenting with various materials.

«with eyes closed, call me»

– The title popped up by writing together, says Rowson.

The first session brought many suggestions for what the title should be. But, Rowson decided to make the title together by doing a writing experiment. The creation of the finished title was a game called «Consequences». Everyone asked a question «What does the exhibition as a whole wants to say?». Then, everybody wrote the answers and past it on. Afterwards, the title «with eyes closed, call me» popped up.

Taking the risk and to seeing what happens is the main concept of the title. Rowson is interested to see how these themed rooms feels for the audience and how they will understand them.

– «with eyes closed, call me» became way of saying «we are going into the world and taking the risk. We are not going to follow the same paths, but think about how to challenge those and how to make our own paths, but doing it together». So, we are closing our eyes and taking the risk, concludes Rowson.

Space of the recovered materials

The «Abstractions in Material Forms» room is the theme with the biggest number of art works. The arts are made mostly from the recovered materials like paper, ceramics, gypsum or even recycled wool.

One of the students that created an interesting wall print is Sidsel Bonde from Denmark. Her work is called «Geometria, géométrie, geometridae» and it is screen printed on plastic.

– It is a text work describing three historical views on geometry and how it has affected our relationship to the landscape, says Bonde.

Another work by the Danish artist Søren Krag titled which is called «Enûma Eliš» (Babylonian creation myth) is comprised three colourful textiles.

– It has been created in the Microsoft Paint and woven by using a digital Jacquard loom, says Krag.  

While these are smaller installations, Victor Guzman´s «As we recall home» is a quite big in size.

– My work focuses on idea of identity, memory and personal histories connected to the idea of home, he explains.  

He has three kinds of works. The first one are drawings as you enter the «Memories, Personal Histories and Collective Narrative» room. The second one is the TV with video that is the starting point of his project. It is based on a conversation that Guzman had with his father where they reflect on memories about his obsession: the satellite dish. The video consists of an archive from family photos, videos and the television channel «TV-Chile». The last one are satellite dishes outside the Kunsthall.