ÖGONHÅLA, ORBIT, 2024
solo show, Oslo Prosjektrom (NO)

“It’s past midnight, but the phone is still shining in my face, like a sun that never sets. I’m lying awake in bed and scrolling on my phone, it’s cool and damp in the room from an open window, and I alternate between kicking off the covers and pulling them back over me. A faint, grey glow fills the room from the phone screen which is set to its lowest brightness. Most things become black and white in the dark. People pass by, I scroll on and replace them with new ones without any real contact with everything that passes under my thumb. All I touch is tempered glass, but the phone detects me and my touch, the skin of my fingers and how they move across the screen. It watches over me and sees what I do, how I navigate through the never-ending pictures and videos. It collects data and maps me, to keep me under its watch. Like a sun that never sets.

On the train heading out to the airport, I sat opposite an older man, he sat two rows further away from me right by the window. It was a spring evening, the April light that flooded in through the large windows flickered as first buildings and then only trees passed by, and illuminated the inside of the carriage. Blue textile seats and grey metal interior, deep shadows formed where the light didn’t reach. The man’s head was completely shaven and his face was round, almost spherical, and wrinkled. It rested heavily on his shoulders and dipped forwards, glowing pinkish yellow in the evening light. His eyes were closed, his tired facial features highlighted from one side like a topography, and the part of his face farthest from the window fell into shadow. I never understood if he was asleep or not, but he seemed introspective and somehow preoccupied. Occasionally he glanced up with peering eyes, through the window and toward the passing landscape somewhere between the town and the airport. He looked out as if to check where he was, but without seeming to doubt that he was on the right track, like an old celestial body in its wont and ancient orbit.”

Prologue (Madonna and Child), 3 A4 xerox prints, wallpaper paste
Black Sun 4 (Midnight Sun over Harstad), 187,5cm x 150cm, xerox prints, wallpaper paste (reproduction of solarised gelatin silver print)
Reflected Black Sun (Tesla), 16mm film loop, 16mm projector, plinth covered in paper
Syzygy (Mother, Photographer, Daughter), 16mm film loop, 16mm projector, screen covered in paper, plinth covered in paper