TRANSFORMATOR
Tulla Elieson, Martin Woll Godal & Jørgen Frederik S. Haarstad
6.mars - 29.mars 2015
About the artists;
Tulla Elieson
Tulla Elieson has a BA from Bath Academy of Art, England (1970-1974). She has held solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions, biennials and ceramic fairs both at home and abroad. Her works can be found in the collections of (among others) the National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo / Museum of Decorative Arts; KODE – Art Museums of Bergen / West Norway Museum of Decorative Art; Nordenfjeldske Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Trondheim; SKMU Sørlandets Art Museum in Kristiansand; and Northern Norway Art Museum in Tromsø. Elieson’s works have also been purchased by Arts Council Norway and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
While being the initiator and coordinator of the project Transformator, Elieson also participates as an exhibitor. At RAM Galleri she presents the installation Høyspent (High Voltage), which is inspired by the industrial products made at Norsk Teknisk Porselensfabrikk (NTP, Norwegian Technical Porcelain Factory). We see a ‘forest’ of vertical forms, the expression of which lies somewhere between sculpture, tubes and electrical insulators. The disks on the floor are meant as ‘platforms’ for reflection and discussion with colleagues participating in the project.
Martin Woll Godal
Martin Woll Godal studied at Bergen Academy of Art and Design, completing an MA in 2007. He explores aesthetic and conceptual expressions that share affinities with architecture and sculpture. The interesting spatial qualities of his artworks become increasingly clear as we move around them. He works additively with construction materials, exploiting the potential of repeated elements to establish rhythmic progression.
During the project period at NTP, Woll Godal took recourse in a construction usually associate with forest management and logging. The principle behind making of wood stacks – also called woodricks – is simple and often used for stacking timber. Using the technique, one can clear a forest floor and gather logs and branches that will not be processed in a mill or used for firewood. Traditional wood stacks in forests can be seen as collections of objects with different lengths, shapes, sizes and amounts – ‘leftovers’, one could say. At NTP, Woll Godal used a technique called extruding. The factory has several old extruder machines that create various profiles. Some of these machines are no longer used due to ware and tare, but also on account of the obsolescence of the products they were used to make. Woll Godal has used these machines to create Reis. The work can thus be seen as a collection of forms with an expression that is laid aside, rendered obsolete.
Jørgen Frederik Scheel Haarstad
Artist statement;
I am a musician and an artist. My creative outputs are intermingled and inseparable, so it makes little sense to perceive them as isolated. Music, in its essence, is ephemeral, immediate and complex. The same thing might be said about my visual works. Through a lyrical engagement with materials, composing through rhythm, repetition and pauses, I hope to transform music into physical manifestations.
Rock music is vulgar romanticism, according to Robert Pattison, and while my artistic method shares the spontaneity and excess of rock n’ roll, it necessarily needs to take into account the fragility of ceramics, and it is this somewhat improvised dialog that my works materialize. Through experimenting with the ceramic object, I seek to reach an abstraction that transcends a set meaning and instead enables a more immediate and physical interpretation.
Lethal Assumption can be perceived as a work that appeals to the senses, yet despite its subtle aesthetic expression, it looks menacing. It does not evoke the traditional connotations of porcelain as a precious and pleasing material. Pointed shards of leftover parts from industrial production are installed in panels and displayed on the floor. The work has an ominous presence, like the hostile surface of a planet of ice in a science-fiction story. The visual experience is intensified by the sound work, which was made through manipulating the same porcelain material. The composite result is a sublime installation that is meant to be felt.