David Tobias Bonde Jensen
Karin Keisu & Josse Thuresson
Magnus Andreas Hagen Olsen
Niels Munk Plum
Lova Ranung
Luca Sørheim
Lesia Vasylchenko & Yurii Tymoshenko
Curated by Karin Keisu, Magnus Andreas Hagen Olsen & Josse Thuresson
With support from Nordisk Kulturfond
How can speculative fiction help us imagine a future when living in a time filled with uncertainty, fear and injustice? What do we dream about? How does it sound and how does it smell? What can we touch?
Touching 2022 is a virtual group exhibition where nine artists create worlds and imagine alternative realities situated in the near future. Each artist has been invited to create an interactive
three-dimensional space. The spaces are interconnected by portals, and the viewers can navigate through them from a first person perspective.
The past year we have been forced to reorient our relationship
to intimacy, communication and globalization. The covid-19
pandemic has situated us in between life and death in a new
way, which is affecting everybody differently. It has contributed
to a societal shift where the notion of care and collective
responsibility has become central; a seemingly conditional and
temporary care that is balanced against continued dividends,
market economy and individualism. The failures of established
power structures are becoming tangible which opens up a
space of critique towards the general longing of going “back
to normal”. Instead of holding on to pieces of normality in a
shattered world, we could try to imagine a world that reinvent
itself unbound from current structures.
Things have changed so fast that picturing the future within a
month, a week or even just a few hours seems to be an abstract
concept. With this in mind, Touching 2022 uses the spirit of
science fiction and worldmaking as a tool for approaching the
coming times, but instead of imagining a distant future we look
at the year 2022. A near future that has the potential to carry
societal structures far away from today’s present.
The participating artists address the gradients and the tension
of being in between togetherness and isolation, utopia and
dystopia, private and public, analogue and digital. In Vessel of
Flesh David Tobias Bonde Jensen explores the boundaries of
life, “liveness” and the afterlife, capturing a transformation of
existence. Lova Ranung considers different ways of portraying
nature and explores the relation between power and cuteness
in Natural+Cute+Vain. In Niels Munk Plum’s MEADOW the
viewer embodies a horse that gallops endlessly, questioning
the solidity of language, notions of work and paradise. Den Luca is informed by images self-published by and of men
on the internet and a childhood forest in Well, at least you died
lifting!”3, proposing an eternal space with existential choices.
In Lesia Vasylchenko & Yurii Tymoshenko’s In a Search for a
Star That Can Bring They Home the viewer is taken to a vast
landscape where a constellation of misleading stars project
multiple night skies. Karin Keisu & Josse Thuresson imagine a
moment between a world falling apart and a world starting over
while a setting sun recites a song in No Promise of Happiness
but the Sun is Setting. Magnus Andreas Hagen Olsen touches
on the power of togetherness situated in the middle of a massive
sports arena surrounded by cheering hooligans in STADIUM.
The compilation of artists presents multiple realities, unbound
by physical limitations and imminent uncertainty. The different
voices create a collective touching point and facilitate a space
where intimacy and future can be imagined and redefined.
Karin Keisu, Magnus Andreas Hagen Olsen and Josse
Thuresson, curators of Touching 2022
November 2020
Still image, Lova Ranung, Natural+Cute+Vain, 2020
Still image, Lesia Vasylchenko & Yurii Tymoshenko, In a Search for a Star That Can Bring They Home, 2020
Still image, David Tobias Bonde Jensen, Vessel of Flesh, 2020
Still image, Magnus Andreas Hagen Olsen, STADIUM, 2020
Still image, Den Luca, Well, at least you died lifting!”3, 2020
Still image, Niels Munk Plum, MEADOW, 2020
Still image, Karin Keisu & Josse Thuresson, No Promise of Happiness but the Sun is Setting, 2020
Erik Thörnqvist, Tactual Interest, 2019
K4 galleri
22.02.19-24.02.19
Curated by Karin Keisu
Tactual Interest, Erik Thörnqvist. Still image.
The everyday schedule of the factory is rigid and with high speed. Even though the prominent presence of technical machines – the human hand is of great importance. Each touch adds value to the product.
What happens though when the system itself implies a policing agent to the persons whom are working there? Is a structured day and becoming a robot as close to bliss one could come? Can swiping your feed be the outermost rebellion to the problem with work? Smear yourself with green goo, take a bite of blue bao bread and then get stuck in the circuit.
Soundtrack by MISSMOTOR, choreography by Emelie Markgren.
Thanks to: LINA SELANDER, BJÖRN ELGERD, MALIN NORBERG, EMELIE MARKGREN and JACK DJERIDI.
Erik Thörnqvist (SE) is a visual artist working mostly with video, sculpture, installation and performance and is currently studying at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.
K4, KØBENHAVNGATA 4B, Oslo
https://www.k4galleri.no/
Surrender is generated from simulated coincidences. The body surrenders to powers
outside of itself in a world consisting of nothing more than attraction and repulsion.
When moving through invisible fields where different forces and rules reign the body
is forced to adapt to the environment and give in to the strongest will.
The works of Oslo based artist Gjermund Eskedal (NO) consist of 3D animated
scenes exploring eerie and claustrophobic themes influenced by pop culture and
science fiction. Their first solo exhibition Surrender consists of five animated works,
exploring digital materials and bodies in motion.
Music production by Liam S Thoresen.
K4, KØBENHAVNGATA 4B, Oslo
https://www.k4galleri.no/
Yafei Qi, Wearing the Fog, 2019
K4 galleri
25.01.19-27.01.19
Curated by Karin Keisu
Wearing the Fog, Yafei Qi. Installation view.
Wearing the Fog is a double-screen video with a non-linear narrative structure. It circles
around the cold of the industrial world and the indifference and estrangement of a family
living in a rapidly developing city. Due to the lack of administrative control, the air pollution
is very serious in this city. In daily life, people have to communicate with each other
through the obstruction of gauze mask and fog. This kind of interaction disrupts the
possibility of real contact. Yafei mix the feeling towards this severe reality and the
understanding towards family life to show the gap between two generations, the
estrangement between the father and the mother and the clash between individual and
social development, all of which is enhanced and manifested through the use of double-
screen.
Duration: 13 min 38 sec
Yafei Qi is a performance- & video-artist with a background in filmmaking and painting
based in Berlin. Her work examines the clashes between cultural norms & traditional
values and the mindset of a globalizing Chinese society. Yafei received her BA in Film- and
Video-Art at the China central Academy of Fine Arts in 2011 and graduated with a MFA
from Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHIB) in 2016. In 2015, she spent six months at
Emily Carr University, Vancouver.
Her 2016 piece Wearing the Fog has been selected by various international films festivals
and won - amongst other awards - Best Experimental Film at The Broadway Film Festival
in Brooklyn, NY. In 2017, her performances Life Tells Lies and I wonder why, as well as the
resulting video-works, received international acclaim. Since then, Yafei has had museum
exhibitions in Bergen, Shenzhen & Beijing.
K4, KØBENHAVNGATA 4B, Oslo
https://www.k4galleri.no/
Lova Ranung's visual and sound piece Forrest (2018) centers around theories of synthesized life and questions about how one can digitalize nature. Scandinavian flora and fauna are placed into the digital realm. Computer generated 3D imagery creates semi-abstract interpretations of nature. Intricately layered compositions of plants and animals make a statement of technology’s impact on planet earth and how advancements in society are affecting the natural systems of life.
Lova Ranung (SE) is currently studying Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London, UK. Ranung recurrently explores the subjective gaze and plays with textures and energies of objects in their work. With the free 3D modeling software Blender Ranung creates poetic videos with ambient and digitally manipulated sounds from nature.
K4, KØBENHAVNGATA 4B, Oslo
https://www.k4galleri.no/