ISCA GALLERY

Lene Baadsvig Ørmen
LOON
11.01 – 10.02.24

You start swimming. Your lungs try to breathe in tune with your arms, drawing in air every time you reach the surface. That's how you persevere. As a semi-aquatic mammal. You feverishly call on Taweret, fabulating on submission and humility. Your skin feels too thin in water. You regret not introducing yourself to the deities until now. Can you submit without losing yourself?

The exhibition LOON revolves around a glitch, an unsettling event where a body was incapable to connect with vital natural instincts. Playing with wildlife dramaturgy in other species and the whispers from an exhausted consciousness, Lene Baadsvig Ørmen further retrieves surrealistic fragments evoked in steel elements and pictorial concrete sheets. With an underlying glance towards the anthropocentric perspective, the pieces jumps in and out of flatness, moving between the irrational mind and concrete matter.

The presence of something greater than ourselves is often closely connected with an experience of unity with nature. Many of us seemingly yearn for a deeper connection, but simultaneously deny that we are a part of it. Especially in circumstances where we are confronted with our own biology. If we internalize this idea, does being detached from nature also mean that we are detached from ourselves? Humankind still depends upon the natural world. However, nature is initially somewhat stingy with its blessings. We are bound to confront our habitat from a position of scarcity, but keep struggling to make it satisfy our demands. Through a whimsical display Baadsvig Ørmens work investigates established dichotomies, with the surface as a possible sculptural strategy. The artist confronts a polarized view within a dilemma, where the subject matter at one hand appear to be crucially existential, yet at the same time strangely trivial.

Pale two-dimensional images expand towards three-dimensional form, imitating blurred copy machine prints via a pragmatic search engine. The line demarcating the natural world from its technological rendering has dissolved, everything seem to exist in an ecological continuum of material development. With a disorienting sense of exclusion Baadsvig Ørmens pieces position themselves with frozen gestures hiding behind stony and remote mechanical structures. Beneath their rigid exterior a sense of curious phobia echoes towards a susceptible future. Our constant evolving demand for progress might never stop.

Lene Baadsvig Ørmen (b.1984, Fredrikstad, Norway) holds an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo (2013), and a BFA from Bergen Academy of the Arts, dept.of Photography (2008). Ørmen’s work is represented in public and private collections, including the National Museum, Stavanger Art Museum, the Norwegian Parliament and Oslo Municipality. She has invited to do public commissions such as UiT Narvik, The Arctic University of Norway, and has participated in residency programs at HIAP, in Helsinki (2017) and Residency Unlimited, in New York (2015). In 2022 she published her first monograph «0» with HKS and Lugemik Publishing. Recent Solo exhibitions include: Subterranea, Hordaland Art Center, Bergen (2020) and The Sculptors Association, Oslo (2019); Soliloquy, Gallery Augusta, Helsinki (2016); Fret Not Upon Thy Blue Funk, Kunstnerforbundet (2016); Dear Darkling, at UKS (2015); x4, Kunsthall Stavanger (2015); and Turbid, Another Space, Copenhagen (2014). A selection of group exhibitions from 2016-2023 include: BLUNK, Trond Mohns Collection, Stavanger Kunstmuseum; Abundance, Galleri F15, Moss; Parallellement, Hermetiske skygger, Oslo; Herfra, Galleri Opdahl, Stavanger; Coast Contemporary 2020, Oslo; Fiskars Village Art Biennale, Finland; Klorofyll og kapital, Akershus Kunstsenter; Nothing You Have To Understand, Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen; Oslo Museum for Samtidskunst; Kunsthall Oslo; Skissen, Drawing Biennial, Tegnerforbundet, Oslo; and Dating Service Autocenter, Berlin.