Prisms of Myopia – Bjørka, Oslo Negativ 2024
12/10/2024 — 27/10/2024
In August of this year, I became a member of Bjørka - a workshop for camera-based artists. While I still work in my studio in Asker, I wanted to have a community in Oslo as well. So now I travel to Oslo one day a week to scan film and meet the wonderful and talented artists at BJØRKA.
During Oslo Negativ, all members exhibit in a group exhibition with the beautiful name Prisms of Myopia, curated by Monica Holmen and with Maya Økland as project manager.
Curator Monica Holmen writes about the exhibition:
In contemporary art, we have long moved beyond the perception of the photographic medium as a document of truth. Like any other artistic medium, camera-based expressions also represent the artist's exploratory gaze, partly subjective and colored by individual engagement. Inspired by myopia, the scientific term for nearsightedness, the exhibition title points to the significance of each artist's dedicated attention and myopic approach to their material.
As a result of an artist's near-sighted studies, and through an insistence on the significance of a given theme, a work of art will attempt to nudge the viewer's gaze in various directions. The very invitation to adopt other viewpoints and see things from multiple perspectives is perhaps also the most important role of contemporary art in our time. A well-known saying talks about walking a mile in someone else's shoes; in art, it's natural to encourage seeing the world through someone else's (metaphorical) glasses.
Like a prism that breaks light rays in countless directions, Bjørka is a gathering place for camera-based artistic development and reflection. Here, 36 artists share analog and digital communal workshops, and for the first time, all are participating in this year's exhibition at Oslo Negativ. Consequently, Prisms of Myopia constitutes a multifaceted image composed of all the myopias that the Bjørka artists represent. Through the exhibition, one also gains insight into some of what occupies contemporary art today.
In Prisms of Myopia, the audience will experience works that draw attention to interpersonal relationships, questions about identity and belonging, and expectations and prejudices in encounters with the people around us. Reflections arising in the wake of the global pandemic, the highly digitalized information society, and how it affects us as human beings are another track in some of the works. A critical look at lifestyles, expectations of constant growth, and how this challenges both the individual and the increasingly strained relationship between humans and nature runs as a common thread in several of the artists' works. Reflections on the place of history are also opened up. What traces of history do we see - be it art history or the larger history - and what implications does it have today? Lastly, there are also more media-specific explorations where photography itself and its possibilities and limitations are the subject of artistic exploration. The results often appear to be abstract and non-figurative, which once again punctures any illusions anyone might have about photography as truth - and rather emphasizes the myopic nature of any artistic project.
Monica Holmen (born 1982) is a curator and coordinator at Nitja Center for Contemporary Art, and a freelancer as a curator, writer, and editor. Holmen is the former co-editor of the magazine Kunstforum, and holds a master's degree in art history from the University of Oslo with the thesis This is MOST Important - Dag Alveng's New York-photographs in light of the American street photography (2010).
The exhibition is supported by Fritt Ord.
