Texts – ArtScene Trondheim


Nora Krug had her international breakthrough with Heimat – a German Family Album, where she confronts her own family’s background during the Nazi regime. Her latest book Diaries of War, gives insight into the everyday experiences of a Russian artist and a Ukrainian journalist during the first year of the war in Ukraine.

Shrink is without doubt the exhibition’s attention-grabber, and rightfully so. It is delicate, imposing, physical, alienating, and intimate, all at the same time.

I wonder how she transfers her motifs to the canvas. How she knows where to cut each hole. I don’t understand how it’s possible to do this by hand, but I’m equally fascinated by the way mere holes of different sizes can add up to a picture.

Reviews, 03.05.2022

The exhibition is at its strongest at the point where the thread begins to fray and to expose the monument’s attempt to round things off, the point at which the viewer is invited to join an unresolved debate, a movement, to entertain doubt; to enter a conflicted space that acknowledges itself as already and always an arena of violence.

Trondhjems kunstforening has been sealed by Den norske idealstaten (The Norwegian Ideal State). Could an ideal ever be anything other than a simplification?

At first glance, the exhibition «Exotic Dreams and Poetic Misunderstandings – Still Life» by Lin Wang has the appearance of a mouth-watering banquet, but the more I have of it, the worse the aftertaste it leaves in the mouth.

The corona crisis, Oslo’s penchant for pompous, iconic buildings, and the uneven distribution of resources between the capital and the rest of Norway may all have helped to pull new patrons and private money into Trøndelag’s cultural sphere.

The Oslo Biennial shows a refreshingly low level of branding and sensationalism. Quite the contrary, it is so unostentatious that locating its headquarters can in itself be something of a challenge. I very nearly ended up at the neighbouring offices of the Oslo Medieval Festival, which was going on at the same time.

The upcoming event 10 working days, where shows, lectures, presentations and exhibitions are held in a rapidly order, one will try and find out what exactly is the role of art and the artist in a post-industrial society. Art Scene Trondheim invited Florian Schneider to elaborate:

On the basis of her work Caliban Katya Sander investigates the idiom of everyday things: I interact not only as an abstract unit, a consumer who can be measured, counted, registered and pre-calculated via algorithms, but also – quite simply – as a body. I touch and I take shape.

A few months before the 1979 UK general election, Margaret Thatcher promised the Chairman of the Arts Council that her government would continue to support the arts. But once elected, she cut spending in all areas of public policy, and the cultural field was no exception. Thatcher’s belief was that the obsolete system of arts patronage should not be compensated for solely by the state, and she appointed Norman St John-Stevas as Arts Minister, who argued that the private sector must be looked to for new sources of funding.

For many of us Brattøra has been the place in Trondheim on the other side of the river where we go swimming, or catch a ferry somewhere else. Now of course it has Rockheim and other changes are afoot in this newish territory reclaimed from the sea. But, as yet, it still seems like a bit of a wasteland. Nevertheless, as we get used to the eastern part of the city coming to resemble wartorn Beirut with the digging operations for the new tunnel, focus has moved on to Brattøra as the next big urban architectural project.