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Karin Keisu & Josse Thuresson
Touching 2022, 2020
UNKNOW
01.12.20-01.04.21

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/
Gjermund Eskedal, Surrender, 2019
K4 galleri
08.02.19-10.02.19
Curated by Josse Thuresson
Surrender, Gjermund Eskedal. Still image.
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, Forrest, 2019
K4 galleri
11.01.19-13.01.19
Curated by Josse Thuresson
Forrest, Lova Ranung. Still image.
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/