Mette Sandfær, Release the Moorings, Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen
Twice a year, Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen exhibits art by a selected MFA student from the Academy of Fine Arts for one week. In March, Danish-born Mette Sandfær showed a large collection of sculptures made from found, cheap, discarded, and worthless materials in the exhibition Release the Moorings. I often chastise myself for visiting the HKS too rarely, but that week I went three times. On each occasion, Sandfær had swung by in the meantime to restage the sculpture park in new ways. Creating a kind of slow-paced Kim’s Game, the ongoing reconfigurations of elements such as moulded polystyrene and convenience food packaging offered new and fresh meaning amidst the throng.
‘Knowing We Won’t Have Each Other Forever’, Bergen Kunsthall
Bergen Kunsthall does not seem to have officially joined the Norwegian Queer Culture Year in 2022. Even so, it has – particularly with Nora-Swantje Almes’s live programme ‘Knowing We Won’t Have Each Other Forever’ – presented a range of talks, happenings, and performances that take international and intersectional queer artistic impulses seriously. Ranging from boat excursions and diasporic club nights during summer to British artist Eve Stainton’s choreographic work Dykegeist (2021) this autumn, the venue has highlighted contemporary art that addresses queer issues beyond the mere surface, presenting a freer, more ephemeral, and, perhaps, queerer programme than much else we have seen in this otherwise extensively homonormative year of queer culture.
Sol Calero, La Cantina de la Touriste, Bergen Assembly
What does Bergen Assembly leave behind when it packs up and departs after having taken over the city’s art scene for a few months every third autumn? Sure, the Side Magazine publications, the merch, and a bunch of good reviews describing the ambitious triennial will still be around. For me, one of the highlights at this year’s instalment of the triennial was the opportunity to revisit the sympathetic relational aesthetic universe of Venezuelan artist Sol Calero in La Cantina de la Touriste (The Tourist Bar, 2022). Although the reasonably priced weekend deals disappeared with the rest of Saâdane Afif’s temporary mysticism, the interior of the restaurant operated under the municipal work-training scheme Second Chance, Food and Talk Cafe (Ny Sjanse, Kafé Mat og Prat) will remain completely overhauled by Calero’s vibrant colours, patterns, and shapes – like a single remaining piece of an intricate puzzle.
– Jakob Myklebust Huus is an art historian graduated from the University of Bergen, where he is also associated with the research group Visuell Kultur. He is currently employed by the competence and network organisation VISP and is project manager for the new organisation FLOKK in Bergen. Jakob works freelance with communication and writes regularly for Kunstkritikk.
For this year’s contributions to Kunstkritikk’s Advent Calendar, see here.
