Artist duo, Martinka Bobrikova (SK/NO/SE) & Oscar de Carmen (ES/NO/SE), has been working together since 2005. Their practice, which is often community based, aims at setting up new social ecosystems. By revolving around the mechanisms and context by which power creates systems of value, they seek to intervene on the border between art and current topics of contemporary life in order to bring about the proposition of the transitory and the utopian.
Titled “Vibrant Mountains,” our exhibition delves into the profound question: What are the powers that emanate from things? This question revolves around our work that proposes a contemplation of contemporary society, questioning the material values that surround us. “Vibrant mountains” is an exploration of the action capacity of matter as a vibrant body.
Drawing from the legacy of the Telemark Kunstsenter building, once a prominent symbol of financial influence as a bank, the exhibition prompts us to envision the structure as a representation of a fictional “faith” centered around capitalist principles. In this sacred space, the artists generate a ritual: diving into the ruins of a failed, unequal and damaging system. On the remains, they erect new symbols. What we see as waste is in reality a world subject to an infinity of transformations.
The proposal is intended to establish a visual and conceptual dichotomy between the cult of capital, represented by the bank, and the imperative to create other connections with the natural and material environment.