Jakob Oredsson: Symbiotic Stories / Petrine Vinje: Surfacing Solids

Galleri F 15 is delighted to present two solo exhibitions: Symbiotic Stories by Jakob Oredsson and Surfacing Solids by Petrine Vinje.

Symbiotic Stories (Alby Always Already) came into being through a year-long research process of seeking stories—architectural, biological, geological, historical, sociological—aspects of Alby that constitute the context of Galleri F 15, and collecting objects existing on diverse spatio-temporal scales, “Natural” and “artificial,” enduring and ephemeral, obvious and obscure. A gradual accumulation of materials interwoven to form the fabric of the exhibition. Weaving means to move to and fro, to be in movement. Each work was created through a practice of repeated routines, moving within and interweaving with Alby. All the objects part of the exhibition already existed and remain in Alby. They are part of an ecology, of which the gallery is one part. Existing ambiguously, simultaneously inside the gallery and outside in the surrounding landscape. The exhibition invites visitors to experience each object as a window that allows different ways of seeing Alby. Every object offering a view simultaneously of past and now. All these objects may be imagined as having entered into a state of symbiosis, their stories interwoven into a new story, a new object of Symbiotic Stories.

In the exhibition Surfacing Solids, Petrine Vinje shows artworks that explore how the earth bears memories, hidden in stratified layers of humus, clay, minerals and seawater. She has examined the founds of an archaeological excavation of the first urban settlement in Oslo, and mineral- and fossil materials, like the man-made composite Solid Surface (often referred to as Corian®). These materials act as main components of new sculptures created for Galleri F 15. In several works, Vinje takes sources from Old Norse poetry, the material text culture from the historical era when we transitioned from oral to literal systems of communication. By allowing these textual sources to surface through hi-tech materials, digital and ancient technologies, Vinje attempts to achieve a flattening of time, in which she unites the not-yet-known in the past, present and future and brings it together in the rooms housing the exhibition.

The two exhibitions present results of research projects by the artists at Norwegian Theatre Academy and Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Symbiotic Stories forms part of Oredsson’s artistic research project Scenography as Symbiosis at Norwegian Theatre Academy. The project explores ways of imagining an ontology of scenography through artistic practice, researching how scenography comes into being, proposing a queering of binaries such as foreground-background, inside-outside, active-passive, present-absent, real-imagined, as foundational for the practice of scenography.

Surfacing Solids presents results of Petrine Vinje’s artistic research project as a doctoral fellow in the Art & Craft Department at Oslo National Academy of the Arts. In the project, Vinje explores going to the origin of something, to the core, or root, as a radical artistic practice. Vinje’s artistic research investigates how human-technological relations shape materials and environments in history, art, and practices connecting to the not-yet-known. Through artistic methods, it raises questions about binary positions in museum archives and asks how cultural memories can fulfil an archive’s potential to suggest other futures through the ontology of the artwork.

Both exhibitions are on view at Galleri F 15 until January 22, 2023.

About Galleri F 15
Located in a a 19th-century manor estate on the island of Jeløya in Moss, Galleri F 15 is one of Norway’s oldest and most prestigious exhibition venues for Norwegian and Nordic contemporary art.