Galleri Opdahl is pleased to present Everyone’s Off to the Rave While I Stare at the Sun Till My Colours Fade by Maruša Sagadin. Bringing together sculpture and paper works, the exhibition explores the encounters between objects, architecture and the people who move among them. Sagadin draws on music, popular culture and the language of the street, using unexpected proportions, vivid colours and humour to unsettle familiar ways of seeing and inhabiting space.
The exhibition takes shape through the reworking of major parts of Zwischen Barock und Romanik liegt die Botanik, (Where Baroque Meets Romanesque, Botany Blooms) commissioned by Kunsthalle zu Kiel in 2025. Situated on Alter Markt, the installation engaged with a square where older buildings stand alongside modernist commercial pavilions. At Galleri Opdahl, its elements are rearranged in response to the gallery’s architecture. Their connection to Kiel remains part of the work, while their new configuration changes how they relate to one another and how visitors encounter them.
Such transformations belong to Sagadin’s broader working method. Returning to existing sculptures allows her to reconsider their form and relevance, carrying something of their previous lives into each new version. The passage from street to gallery also brings a change in attention. Outdoors, an artwork may interrupt a daily route or become a place to pause; indoors, its presence unfolds within the conventions of an exhibition. Her use of the same materials across these settings connects them, while drawing attention to differences in access, expectation and use.
The paper works approach these questions through a material closely associated with public communication. Sagadin paints, builds up and folds advertising posters into compositions of varying scale. As their messages are covered and their surfaces acquire depth, the posters begin to occupy space rather than simply carry images. Some recall elements used to screen a view or separate one area from another, yet their altered construction leaves their purpose uncertain. Painting becomes inseparable from the paper’s physical form.
A feminist concern with who can shape and occupy space connects these strands of the exhibition. Sagadin examines the assumptions built into architecture and the authority granted to particular forms and appearances. Fruits and other botanical motifs can suggest parts of the female body, introducing intimate associations into structures derived from public space. Glossy finishes, emphatic colour and exaggerated proportions resist visual restraint. Their humour gives these questions a playful expression without removing their social significance.
The title Everyone’s off to the rave while I stare at the sun till my colours fade offers a more personal register than the architectural wordplay of the Kiel project. It places the anticipation of a shared event beside the image of someone remaining apart. Music and collective movement are suggested, but so are stillness, exposure and the passing of time. Read in this light, the title brings a melancholy undertone to the exhibition’s playful character, leaving belonging and distance in unresolved tension.
