All you want - Tonje Paus & Ane Barstad Solvang
All you want by Tonje Paus & Ane Barstad Solvang took place in SKOG from 8 June to 2 July 2023. Some things we need, other stuff we don’t. Like porcelain and paintings?
In All you want high status materials and techniques are combined with textiles and low status functional objects. Together, they form an image that is possible to enter. The duo holds an interest in house products and the domestic scene. Concrete fixation on objects is contrasted with what’s outside the windows - the flowers, the water.
For this occasion the artists have collaborated on a series of works modeled by Paus and decorated by Barstad Solvang. The collaboration consists of hand built objects in porcelain painted with cobalt, a classical combination where high precision traditionally was deeply valued. However, the process with these objects has been playful, spontaneous and free, and reflects the artists’ wish to open up, and build, a common world.
All you want is an installation about being obsessed with things and expectations, and being liberated from them. Through focus on household, and different materials, the duo wishes to create a room that challenges hierarchies. What reflects status, gender and positions in the art hierarchy and the society as a whole?
Foto: Kevin Fauske
Foto: Kevin Fauske
About the artists
Tonje Paus (b. 1990) works with hand built porcelain. She depicts familiar, everyday objects that often have value due to their function: without the function the object is worthless. In the art world it tends to be the other way around. Paus is curious about how our expectations form the way we relate to an object, and what actually make an object what it is. Many of the pieces shown in the exhibition are originally made in cheap materials with low status, such as plastic and rubber. Porcelain is one of the most precious, and most durable materials we have. By reproducing these trivial objects in porcelain she wants to play with our perception of things, and shed light on the materialism that we are all absorbed by.
Ane Barstad Solvang (b. 1991) is an interdisciplinary artist working with painting, poetry, literature and performance. Her practice centers around the modern and traditional female role. Thematically the work spans between canonical art and expectations towards women, health, emotional work, economy and loneliness in the digital age. Recently, she has also investigated freedom from, or a break away from these themes, through a focus on nature and an automatic, feminine language. Barstad Solvang works in a diaristic tradition that demystifies the female, rather than objectifying her.
Foto: Kevin Fauske