HILDE ROGNSKOG
POWER AND POWERLESSNESS,
MELANCHOLY IN THE AGE OF FREEDOM
Kunstplass [10], 4th to 24th of September 2015
Overview from the exhibition - POWER AND POWERLESSNESS, MELANCHOLY IN THE AGE OF FREEDOM. Kunstplass [10] - 2015
Resistance Ablution,
Kunstplass [10], 2015.
Wood, textile 150x150 cm
These panels are made of red coveralls done by unravelling all the parts and sew it together again. The coveralls are clean in one sense, but are marked with stains of paint, grease and acid damages. Stains which not disappear in the washing machine. Then to of the three panels where put in a bath with bleach and a bath with hyrdogenperoxide. As the bleach went along, the red monochrome colour became more different, and got colours toward orange, yellow and white.
Riot, Suits Us,
Kunstplass [10], 2015.
Pencil on paper 52x42 cm
These eight drawings are inspired of an anti austerity protests which I experience in Brussels, 2014.
Instead of regular demonstrations as activists or other demonstrators or rebels, I change the situation.
Here the demonstrators are man and woman in suits, dressed up. Instead of throwing stones, they are throwing suitcases and papers are flying in the air.
Blame me, Blame you
Kunstplass [10], 2015.
Video dur. 07.34
A video is running in a loop on two screens, standing in front of each other. At the screen it’s the artist throwing eggs at herself, and is being hit by eggs. As the video goes on, the wall behind are being more and more covered with the yellow colour of the yolk, as an abstract expressionistic painting. It’s painful and the artist makes sounds and heavy breathing because its hurts.
Doing Well
Kunstplass [10], 2015.
Office table, chair, plants, tweezer
180 x 80 x 110 cm
Several cactuses are placed at the office table. Beside the plants are all the spikes from the cactuses lying in a mound. The spices are picked out with a tweeze. As the title refers to, benefactions do not necessarily doing well for the recipients.
THE FOURTH CHAIR AND THE ACT OF UNKNOWNS KNOWNS
Wood, screws, brackets, posters, variable dimentions.
This is a work regarding a period of 50 years. A backdrop for this work is Joseph Kosuths “One and three chairs” (1965). The first poster shown at left, is a text from the non materialist and conceptual artist Robert Wilson shown as a discussion piece, done at Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindoven, 3. juni 1983.
The text on the right is almost the same text, but this time it`s from a press conference held by Donald Rumsfeld at the US Department of Defence in 2002. Here he tries to explain why it was necessarily to declare war at Saddam Hussein.
As Slavoj Žižek has pointed out, what Rumsfeldt did not see as an alternative in this, a little bit confused presentation, was the constellation: «Things we know but don’t know that we know, the unknown known» It is about the unconsciousness, a situation where we don’t know what we know, but we act accordingly. Therefore, in this work I show the possibility of a fourth chair, a chair that is a chair, but we formally don’t know it. It’s possible to see each component, and it’s recognizable as a chair, but decomposed. A blind spot in American warfare, and as I think, also in Joseph Kosuth`s work One and three chairs.
