VIDAR KOKSVIK

Et annet sted

4 May - 12 August 2018

The glass ar­tist Vi­dar Koks­vik has so­me­ti­mes de­scri­bed him­self as a glass­blowing pu­rist. He has come to pro­mi­nen­ce as a glass ar­tist by using glass­blowing as his main tech­ni­que for trea­ting the ma­te­ri­al, its forms, co­lours and pat­terns. Koks­vik is a ‘samp­ler’ of glass his­tory. His inte­rest in tra­dition, par­ti­cu­lar­ly the tra­dition of Ve­ne­ti­an glass, has been im­por­tant.

For this ex­hi­bition, Koks­vik for the first time pre­sents sculp­tu­ral­ly-shaped works that share a uni­fy­ing nar­ra­ti­ve. They are not mere­ly in­di­vi­du­al ob­jects. The ex­hi­bition deals with ‘hu­man in­ter­ven­tion in na­tu­re’ and opens for as­socia­tions re­gar­ding the con­trast betwe­en re­pul­sion and at­trac­tion and betwe­en life and death.

Koks­vik’s new pro­ject also explo­res one of the fore­most qua­lities of glass, name­ly beauty. In the past he has stated that ‘per­haps beauty is enoug­h’ and al­low­ed it to be a sig­ni­fi­cant ele­ment in his works. Now he al­lows him­self to be chal­len­ged by the li­mi­na­li­ty and con­trasts betwe­en ug­li­ness and beauty. He also bor­rows re­fe­ren­ces from Rem­brand­t’s pain­tings of slaugh­te­red car­cas­ses and Dami­en Hir­st’s di­vi­ded cada­vers for this ex­hi­bition.

Vi­dar Koks­vik (b. 1969, Sunn­fjord Nor­way) stu­died glass art at the Orre­fors Glass School in Sweden. He gra­dua­ted in 1994 and com­pleted furt­her stu­dies in three-di­mensio­nal de­sign at the Sur­rey In­sti­tute of Art and De­sign in Eng­land in 1998. He has a broad expe­ri­en­ce from na­tio­nal and in­ter­na­tio­nal glass stu­dios. He also holds an MA in cu­ra­to­ri­al prac­tices from The Uni­ver­sity in Ber­gen. In 1998, Vi­dar Koks­vik took part in es­tab­lish­ing the glass stu­dio Egen­art near Oslo, and la­ter Klart glass in Grue in Hed­mark with the ar­tist Kari Hå­kon­sen. Vi­dar Koks­vik has held se­ve­r­al solo ex­hi­bitions and par­ti­ci­pa­ted in se­ve­r­al in­ter­na­tio­nal ex­hi­bitions. He has car­ried out va­rious pub­lic deco­ra­tion com­mis­sions and re­ce­i­ved awards for his works. Col­lections whe­re his work is re­pre­sented in­clu­de amongst ot­hers The Na­tio­nal Mu­se­um of Art, Ar­chitec­tu­re and De­sign in Oslo, SKMU in Kris­tian­sand, KODE Art Mu­se­um in Ber­gen and The Gras­si Mu­se­um in Leip­zig, Ger­ma­ny.

The ex­hi­bition was of­fi­ci­al­ly ope­ned by Jar­le Strømod­den, di­rec­tor of Vi­ge­land-Mu­se­et.