Å føle med blikket / To Feel With Your Eyes
Participating artists:
Sara Eliassen / Idun Baltzersen / Marthe Karen Kampen / Johannes Borchgrevink Hansen / Anders Holen / A Kassen / Lillian Tørlen / Ann Kristin Einarsen
The exhibition Å føle med blikket presents works by seven artists who are all associated with the ongoing art programme for Fornebubanen. In the art gallery, the public is given the opportunity to meet the artists through works that elaborate on their individual practices and show how ideas take shape through material-based exploration and artistic process. The title of the exhibition is inspired by a quote from the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty: ‘The tactile is in the eye as much as in the hand; vision itself is a form of touch.’
In Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Merleau-Ponty argues that perception is not a passive, distanced observation, but a bodily, situated and active way of being in the world. He challenges the traditional distinction between subject and object, mind and body, and instead argues that the body is our primary tool for experience and understanding.
In this context, materiality is not just a visual quality in the encounter with art, but a sensory dimension that activates both body and space. The artworks in the exhibition do not emerge as representations of ideas alone, but as results of processing, intuition and dialogue between artist and material. Surfaces, textures and shapes appear as meaningful elements in their own right - as active players in the creation of the work and its encounter with the viewer.
Through media such as sculpture, installation, film, graphics, ceramics and textiles, the artists work with different materials that allow an investigation of the relationship between the sensual and the conceptual, the physical and the perceptual. Merleau-Ponty's thinking thus provides a relevant framework for understanding how materiality in these works not only conveys but also expresses - and how the viewer's bodily presence becomes part of the artistic experience and the creation of the work.
Idun Baltzersen (b. 1987, NO) works with woodcuts on a large scale, where the technique functions both as a form of expression and as a material in itself. She prints on textile, which is then sewn together into monumental collages that are further processed with paint, cutting and various surface treatments. Combining industrial and unexpected materials with precision craftsmanship, Baltzersen creates distinctive, tactile works that explore themes of gender, identity and physicality.
(translated with DeepL)
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