Anders Holen at Peder Balke Center

“…A search for the it in things, and an interest for object agency form a point of departure regarding the works by Anders Holen. The notion of the it leaves a historical trail, in which the idea of usage determine whether the thing is what the thing is supposed to be, or if it turns into something else in the suspension of habit. The term object agency, on the other hand, relates to theory revolving around affordance and the idea of bringing objects into play as agents, and furthermore discuss the possibility of appointing the object the role of primary agent, and man as secondary. This does not propose to ignore the impossibility of awarding objects the means of action, will, and choice, but rather acknowledge that objects inhabit a mixture of properties that could potentially circumscribe the theatre that is our responses. By assessing one’s part as material in a symbiotic world one could potentially recognize both the self and the it as participants, and furthermore render the possibility of a self in the it, or even an it in the self. With that as premise, any discourse concerned with the notion of primary agency in objects could easily be met by a noble, “say it is so”…”

Excerpt from “Aid for Impending Quagmire, and the Unabbreviated Circuit of Agency”

Anders Holen (b. 1986) has a degree from the National Academy of the Arts Oslo, and works in the field of sculpture and installation. For the show at Peder Balke Center Holen has compiled works from four projects, spanning from 2014 – 2017. New instalments of the projects: Aid for Impending Quagmire, Stimulus, Agent, and Happy are distributed throughout the two floors of the Peder Balke Center. The artist is represented by Giorgio Galotti gallery in Turin (IT).