MERK: Åpning fredag 17. februar kl. 18:00 - 20:00
In their duo show “Phoenix Fuel” Sarah Gilbert and Gabriel Johann Kvendseth juxtapose their tactile explorations of transformation, hoping that the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Gabriel Kvendseth
Foto av Pål Hoff
Sarah Gilbert
Sarah Gilbert is an artist and educator based in what is currently called Los Angeles, California (GABRILEÑO/TONGVA LANDS), where she is Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Pitzer College. Her work explores craft and collectivity— how the sticky relationality of material transformation can open spaces for thinking and feeling together in more-than-human worlds. Joining a wide range of materials and processes, her interdisciplinary practice draws on material memory and tensions between figuration and abstraction as springboards for contemplating our experience of time. Moving away from narratives of material mastery or maker-movement individualism, Gilbert's practice highlights the ethical particularities of encounters with difference, and the radical potential of embodied attunement to reorient us towards collective care.
Gilbert has exhibited widely throughout the United States and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include BREAKING AND BENDINGat Reed College (Portland, OR), GOOSEBUMPS an interactive sound installation as part of the 7th Tallinn Applied Arts Triennial, Time Difference (Tallinn, Estonia), and TURNINGS at the Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including WOMEN ON THE FENCE (Dessert Hot Springs, CA) and GENERIS01: COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION at the Bushwick Expo (Brooklyn, NY).
Gabriel Johann Kvendseth’s (b. 1984, Karlsøy/Gálsá, Norway) artistic practice encompasses sculpture, installation, performance and participatory situations.
His work appears at the same time multifunctional and dysfunctional, oscillating between concrete prose and metaphor. Traffic across disciplinary borders is a leading trope. He frequently works with abandoned materials, which he manipulates idiosyncratically, often ending up with sculptures that resemble weapons, tools or ceremonial artefacts.
He has exhibited at Arkhangelsk Fine Arts Museum and Murmansk Regional Art Museum in Russia, Sámi Center for Contemporary Art in Karasjok, Nordic House in Reykjavik, Northern Norwegian Art Museum in Tromsø, Kristiansand Kunsthall, Kunstnerforbundet and Kunstindustrimuseet in Oslo, Kunsthall Oslo, KODE 2 and Kraft in Bergen. His work is represented in the collections of The Art Museum of Northern Norway; KODE1; Hordaland County; Narvik Municipality and The Faculty of Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen. He lives and works in Bergen and is a graduate of the Bergen National Academy of Art and Design.