Åpent Galleri - Maria Brinch "Four Arms, Floor Hanging"

Maria Brinch
Four Arms, Floor Hanging

Vernissage - 16.03.2023 // 19.00

Utstillingen står til 16.04.
Galleriet er åpent hver lørdag og søndag 12.00 - 16.00.

Utstillingstekst av kurator Andreas Schlaegel.

For her new exhibition project Maria Brinch is presenting her latest work all over Hos Arne. For more than a decade since her graduation from the Oslo art academy she has been working intensely with textiles, reviving the concept of tapestry, continuously shifting the boundaries of her work to include not only industrially produced materials, but also taking aboard aspects of photography and digital imagery, installation and painting. Playing with aspects of textiles, that relate home-making and interior decoration to a foundation layer of world-making and being in the world, her work plays out notions of mise en scene, of cloaking and unveiling, the trace of the hand, the folds of space, movement and time, and the pockets these folds create.With its intense focus on seemingly tiny details Maria Brinch’s work still keeps a larger sense of history in view: the close ties of the development of fabrics to the cultural development of mankind, from economy to language. Not to speak only of the role of fabric production in the history of colonialism and slavery, after all, the earliest looms appeared parallel to the development of agriculture, woven and embroidered imagery is as old as painting, Jacquard looms foreshadow computer programming.The history of textile production from its earliest days has infiltrated the way we speak and think. How closely fabric is interlinked with our being human is best experienced in language and the plentiful ways we use metaphors related to textiles, yarn, weaving, spinning, etc., it is virtually impossible to untangle. The word text itself is derived from the word for something woven. Against this background Maria Brinch accepted the role of the trickster, who uses her in-depth knowledge in this specific craft to communicate. Not only within but along the craft and its discourses, beyond its horizons, reflecting on and expanding -not only metaphorically - the boundaries that constitute the world, we make and ultimately inhabit.

/ This presentation will give viewers the opportunity to experience a variety of aspects of her work in an (yet unfinished) suite of four episodes.

/ The exhibition Four Arms, Floor Hanging at Hos Arne is curated in dialogue with Andreas Schlaegel.

Maria Brinch (b. 1984) lives and works in Oslo. She graduated from Oslo Art Academy and the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her practice incorporates the social aspect of craftsmanship, where the exchange of traditional knowledge is a platform for personal narratives and political experiences across cultures, resources, and assumptions. In recent years, she has collaborated on exhibitions, workshops, and artist book productions with artists in Yangon, Myanmar, and Kampala, Uganda. Her work has previously been shown at Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), UKS (Oslo), Kunstnerforbundet (Oslo), Salgshallen (Oslo), Elephant Kunsthall (Lillehammer), Entrée (Bergen), Myanmart Gallery (Yangon in Myanmar), Uganda National Museum (Kampala in Uganda), and NADA Art Fair (New York). Upcoming solo shows in 2023 include Hos Arne (Oslo), Galleri Grotten (Oslo), and Krutthuset KOSA (Maridalen in Oslo). Maria Brinch combines photography and painting in collaged wall-hung textiles and makes her sculptural mounting rods in wrought iron and pinewood. The photographic aspect consists of spontaneous mobile phone snapshots from her everyday life and staged tableaux, representative of our, and mostly her own, contemporary accumulation of stored digital information. Brinch connects the fabric’s material function with its emotional dimension, with references to classic ornamental tapestries, urban laundry, and the territorial use of decorative wrought iron gates. Her work also includes worn objects and the annual artist book, The Birthday Paper.

Andreas Schlaegels writing is published in international art journals such as Flash Art International (Milan), Frieze (Berlin/London), /100 (Berlin), Billedkunst (Oslo), etc., as well as in publications of the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; MUSAC, Leon; Aspen Museum, Colorado; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt/Main; Thyssen Bornemisza Contemporary, Vienna; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf and Berlin. Recently he co-edited Lucid Knowledge, a critical reader accompanying the 8th Triennial of Photography in Hamburg, 2022. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of his music project Art Critics Orchestra, to be celebrated in a presentation at Kulturbrauerei Kindl, Berlin.