Artist: Ingeborg Tysse
Exhibition title: Skrømt
Venue: Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen, Norway
Date: November 24 – December 10, 2023
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Hordaland Kunstsenter
Note: Exhibition’s floor plan is available here
In Skrømt, we are introduced to a landscape exploring the relationship between nature, human and machine by delving into the forest as a metaphor and portal to another motley-realm. Hybrid bodies of organic and synthetic origin are connected through squirming cables resembling nervous systems, binding the elements as roots between trees in the forest. They can be seen as individual characters within a chaotic symbiotic structure, insisting on connecting through “plugging in”. The sculptures are playful and rough, hovering between being logs, human, animal and machine. These characters are collapsing binaries and presenting entangled forms, comprising an installation that interweaves scenographic elements with the landscape of the forest. Through animating and enhancing their inherent character traits, Tysse transmogrifies them, disrupting the limbs and replacing the organs, with synthetic prothesis and technological devices.
The exhibition takes its name from Norwegian folk tradition, the term Skrømt being a supernatural entity of an indeterminate character, translated directly as “ghost”. In this exhibition the title alludes to its spiritual and local nature; situating its lore within the Norwegian forest and tales involving trolls and other mythical creatures. It has been said that some of the oldest trees live for 500 years and die for 500 years, through housing thousands of micro-organisms in the forest. Tysse explores the idea of an afterlife for the young and dead logs, keeping them alive by connecting them in new destructive and creative contemporary tales.
Working with the levels at Hordaland Kunstsenter between the crypt, the gallery space and the exterior (windows), Tysse plays with the idea and symbol of the house as a mirror of the psyche. In this exhibition, the crypt as well as the forest, can be understood as the deepest, messy and sensuous level of our unconscious. Looking at the buildings’ historical tradition as a monastery and later as “Nykirkens Fattigskole’’, to name a few of its historical operations, the artist relates it to the forest’s diversiform systems, seeing if they can merge into the synthetic, interlaced space of Skrømt.
Ingeborg Tysse (b. 1992, Stavanger) is currently studying for her Master in Fine Art at the Art Academy in Bergen. Her artistic practice covers a range of mediums including sculpture, installation, weavings, costumes, video and sound. She creates sculptural bodies bearing traces of historic and contemporary myths, feminism and environmental concerns. When merging organic and synthetic materials with craft techniques, Tysse thematizes the history of traditional craft and form new hybrid meetings which often unfolds in scenographic installations featuring complex creatures. Central in her process is working with humor and seriousness side by side, approaching her surroundings through an animistic perspective and a method of care and conservation. She holds a BFA from the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo, Textile Department and from the Art Academy in Iceland. Recent exhibitions are Shared Imaginations at Titanikas in Vilnius Lithuania (2023), Pleasure at NOGOODS, Bergen Norway (2023) and Aeaea in Podium Oslo Norway (2023).
The MA Week is a collaboration between Hordaland Kunstsenter and the Art Academy – Department of Contemporary Art, UiB. Through an open call, MFA students are invited to submit proposals for an exhibition to be realised at Hordaland Kunstsenter. Guest jury-member this year was artist and KMD alumni Mette Sandfær.
