C YA! includes visual artists Ingrid W. Berven and Lillian Presthus, a collaboration featuring torn up portrait images that have been weaved into images, and video art. The exhibition is curated by Bjørn Inge Follevåg, Director of Kabuso Art Museum and will be on display at the NOoSPHERE Arts gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. There will be an opening reception on Friday Apr 5, 6-8pm.
From the press release:
C YA ! – short for see you – is not only a parting comment but also recognition of having been noticed by someone.
On the other hand it may symbolize an outside observer looking at the world, but not sharing in it.
Contrary to in everyday speech, where intuition helps you make the right choice through seemingly no effort on your own, the term intuition in phenomenology refers to immediate recognition. The intuitive body is a conscious body, and the sum of our personal history; a subject awareness of its environment reaching out to other subjects recognizing them as similar. The observation of such phenomena and how they appear to us as spectators are key elements in the selection of work for this exhibition. Berven/Presthus allow us to share in what they have observed, leaving us to analyze, consider, accept or reject their observations.
In her deconstruction and transformation project, Lillian Presthus started shredding her old paintings into thin strips before weaving them together as new work. Meticulously, she tore up years’ worth of family portraits, then reassembled the pieces to re‐stitch the remains with methodical precision and dogged efforts. The result is a whole new series of work where slices of life can be glimpsed in‐between the interwoven strips of canvas. The original themes vanished. Through a painful process, what used to be cohesive works speaking of identity and remembrance became fragments of narratives and shards of identity..
Ingrid W. Berven questions authority and the art world. In her videos, she becomes an outside observer of a system that
defines art on her behalf. She comments on the power structures of the art world; the curators, market mechanisms and
issues of integrity. In her videos, through the lens of her camera and in her installations, the artist casts herself as the
spectator. Her comments on the heavy hand of the market are highly relevant. Berven also works with themes of identity
and belonging. She offers insights into the world we live in; our consumerism, lifestyle, shallowness and greed. Acute observations of life, Berven’s pieces make us reflect on the systems of which we all are part.
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About the artists:
Ingrid W. Berven (Norway) trained as a visual artist at Bergen National Academy of Arts in Bergen and in Helsinki, and also attended the Grieg Academy for Music. One of Norway’s most respected new media artists with a strong social and political voice, she has completed a series of commissions and shown widely in her native country and abroad. She has also served as a curator and stage designer for theater troupes, and was the initiator of the artist‐run gallery BY THE WAY – Gallery of Contemporary Art, Bergen. (www.berven.no)
Lillian Presthus (Norway) studied fine art in Norway and Finland. A visual artist who is influenced by textile tradition, she is primarily known for her paintings of domestic scenarios. Identity and family relations are recurring themes. A recipient of several grants, Presthus has shown extensively in the Scandinavian countries, received several public commissions,
and is represented in the collection of Art Council Norway. (www.lillianpresthus.com)
About NOoSPHERE Arts:
NOoSPHERE Arts, an artist‐run, nonprofit exhibition and performance venue on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, is pleased to present once again the show that was initially washed away by Hurricane Sandy in November of last year: C YA!, featuring visual artists Ingrid W. Berven and Lillian Presthus. Curated by Bjørn Inge Follevåg, Director of Kabuso Art Museum. This exhibition is the first in a series of collaboration projects between the two artists scheduled throughout the next two years.