Karin Blomgren at Entrée

Artist: Karin Blomgren

Exhibition title: The Sum of All Forces

Venue: Entrée, Bergen, Norway

Date: February 13 – March 28, 2021

Photography: Bjarte Bjørkum / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Entrée, Bergen

Entrée is proud to present Karin Blomgren’s first solo exhibition in Bergen. Blomgren takes as a starting point the gallery’s location, its physical conditions, as well as the city’s industrial markings and shifting infrastructure. In the confrontational and immersive installation, The Sum of All Forces, objects are engaged as counterweights in a machinery that acts in a finely tuned balance, but which nevertheless threatens those present with its potential collapse.

Karin Blomgren (b. 1987, Stockholm, SE) lives and works in Bergen. In her practice, she has immersed herself in clay and other ephemeral materials, which she combines with an exploration of spatiality and physicality. In her works, the body’s smallness and fragility in relation to the outside world are often emphasized through the use of large volumes and the influence of gravity on various materials such as wet clay. She is educated at Bergen Academy of Art and Design as well as Stockholm University, and participated in the international research project Topographies of the Obsolete from 2012-16. Her first individual solo exhibition, Transit, took place in 2018 as part of Bodø Biennial at Bodø Art Society and she presented the work Långa kolonner faller från mina fingrar for the Norwegian Sculptors Society’s sculpture zone in Øvre Slottsgate in Oslo in the spring 2020. The same year she was the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Sweden) Artist-in-Residence at Cité Internationale Des Artes in Paris. Blomgren has been awarded The Norwegian Association of Art Societies’ Debutant Prize 2016 and is part of the studio collective Blokk in Bergen. In collaboration with Erna E. Skúladóttir, she has distinguished herself with several monumental installations since 2015. Their work as an artist-duo is known for containing impulses from the surrounding landscape and its geology, local history and the site’s architectural features. Collaborative projects include Extractions at Kunsthall Stavanger, Of Dark Wood or Rich Soil at Gallery F 15, Moss; Deposit at KRAFT, Bergen and Inundation at Parcours Céramique Carougeois International Biennial 2017, Switzerland.

Karin Blomgren, The Sum of All Forces, 2021, installation view, all images by Bjarte Bjørkum