1. Tekst written for the catalogue by
Gavin Jantjes
Artistic Director
Henie-Onstad Art Center, Norway
------------------------
2. Tekst written for the catalog by
Øyvind Storm Bjerke
------------------------
The sculpture of Marian Heyerdahl have their roots in many parts of
the world but the dominant one over the past years is Africa. The cycle
of her artistic research has come full circle from African continent
back to her home. It reflects an artist`s concern with the elements
air, earth, fire and water. Her work in ceramics, has made her aware
of these primary elemental propreties in the materials used in adobe
construction. The formal and aesthetic propreties in her work speak
of a simplicity of form, of low technology rether than high, offering
an antithesis to a hyper post modern environment.
Marian Heyerdahl has made a adobe structure in Africa and this new installation
in the norwegian part of her sculptural dialogue with the Gambia. In
Africa her sculptures stood outdoors in warm day light and even though
her new work is made inside the gallery, it evokes a rural expanse.
The scale of her construction reflects the man-made as well as group
accomplishment. Both material and form speak of an organic connection
to the earth, of sculotural forms arising from it and not seeking to
disengage gravity as modern sky scrapers appear to do. The reach is
not for the sky. It is an uplifting, moment, of an art which is very
much earth bound.
In another way the ancient materials of adobe are very contemporary
even fashionable. The return by many contemporary architects to this
ecological and economical building tecnique around the world makes its
sculptural language international.
At the close of this century it is refrashing to be reminded of things
basic, organic and in touch with the deep traditions of human kind.
Gavin Jantjes
Artistic Director
Henie-Onstad Art Centre
--------------------------------------------
Tekst written for the catalogue by
Øyvind Storm Bjerke:
Uppon entering the room one is confronted by a road or path of dry
and crackled clay, which leads towards a wall at the opposite side of
the space. The wall is constructed from bales of hay which are stacked,
trimmed and coated with clay. Heyerdahl`s road and wall were constructed
at her studio in Oslo in 1998. The clay was procured locally. On the
walls are color photographs of material structures and an architectural
construction in an odd, organic form, which rises up from a monotonous,
sunparched landscape.
The organic scuptural form documented in the photographs is a prosject
executed in the Gambia. This construction of sun-dried clay was accomplished
in cooperation with local labour. The local element should not however,
be overemphasized. Adobe buildings is a cultural widespread and world-encompassing
phenomenon, and must be percived as a basic construction technique in
societies which are based upon low tecnology. The two works which are
presented in this exhibition actually have more in common with one another,
than not; and should be seen as exponential depictions from ywo different
cultures.
Heyerdahl`s works are, therefore, neither a road, a wall or a habitat
in the sense that architectural constructions normally are intended
to have functional usages associated with transportation or buildings.
Her Gambian project`s main structure is not based upon traditional local
clay hut design, but is inspired rather by the lower trunk of a specific
local tree (baobab tree). The adobe is made of termite clay, and is
built up from a series of belted layers, thick at the structure`s base
and thinner towards the top. Lightholes allow for an economical (a modest)
natural lighting which gives the room`s inner ambience a suggestion
of almost sacred character.
The sructure`s architectural core gives involuntary association to a
building. Detachment from theoretical functional usage places the work
more in the genre of artistic abstraction, while at the same time the
stuctural form and effect of material usage, allude again to employtment
of function; to errect a wall. This marked dichotomy between the work`s
identity and artform categorization reflects the same excitement which
is also ever-present in evocative, living works of art where the nature
of the specific artform is more immediately recognizable.
The adobe structure in The Gambia raises the question of western artist`s
use of local culture as the basis for an aesthetic practice which is
essentially foreign to the same local culture. When the relationship
is a oneway communication on the artist`s premises where the art prosess
is composed of elements from the local culture combined with established
aesthetic practice to satisfy western art consumtive interpretation,
there normally arises a question of explotation. In the case of Heyerdahl`s
work there is a striving toword dialogue between equal parts with the
intention of creating balance betweenwestern cultural discipline and
local Gambian craftmanship (which must be perceived as one variety of
a global building technique), as well as a testament to the new situation
which arises when two disciplines meet without totally blending together
or cancelling each other out, but rather are profiled side-by-side as
equal components. Thus this example of equanimity becomes a metaphor
unto itself, representing an ideal for relations between two cultures
instead of an act of displacement or consuption between two diverse
cultures.
Clay as a material is by no means neutral. In addiction to pointing
back towords that which was primal in context of tecnological level,
the clay also refers to originality itself; the creation myth of man
made from clay (and primus modus). The work process which involves a
high degree of handicraft is also far from significant neutral. Hanicraft
by definition invites technological limitation, and is an act of intimacy
and interdependence between idea, body, work process and final creative
product, which refers to a disposition concerning the relationship between
nature and culture as a gradual, sliding transition -i.e.a context.
The road and the wall at the exhibition at the Henie-Onstad Art Center
stand out as formulations of the same simbols in new forms, and form
another time. The crackled crust is simultaneously a road - threatened
and bursting open- and a path which leads to eventuality`s hidden possibilities.
The wall, wich is concurrently an ending and a defense against the unknown,
parts itself in its middle as a vaginal form - which also suggests new
life.
Øyvind Storm Bjerke
-----------------------------------