12 – 21 January 2007
UKS

EXHIBITION
UTKANTEN: KRISTIAN ØVERLAND DAHL

FOG

”The trustful ways in which we deal with pathos is one of the great mysteries to me” (Kristian Ø. Dahl)

Dahl has in a series of projects explored the rhetorical phenomena pathos, with emphasis on the artist’s role and myth, but also how contemporary society is legitimizing power and power structures through pathos. Like fog, pathos is still obscuring and covering the more healthy relations regarding ”truth” and ”the natural”, he argues. In FOG, the artist is transforming the exhibition space into a mythical landscape of sculptures in material like foam, cardboard, moss, and hair. Here he confronts the biblical, political, and artistic pathos, and questions our apparently eternal benevolence facing the phenomena. Also, the meaning we impose on an artwork is a form of pathos, Dahl argues – a declaration of trust based on benevolence. Through the sculptures he wishes to analyze or objectify pathos, thus uncover and demystify the pathetic. According to Dahl, the artist should problematise his or her personal expression – it should be questionable, and he is skeptical towards the formal as a main artistic focus. In this way, he is criticizing the subject of the artist and the artist’s role, at the same time as religious and secular institutions intentions in communicating totality and performing transactions of trust, are challenged.

Kristian Ø. Dahl graduated from the Art Academy in Bergen and Oslo in 2005. His solo show NIGHT is currently running at Gallery TAFKAG (The Art space Formerly Known As Galuzin). He has also had a solo exhibition at Gallery Fimbul in Oslo and has taken part in a number of group shows nationally as well as internationally.

Downloads:
Utkanten_Kristian_Overland_ Dahl_2007_Press.zip (0.4mb)

 

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