It is an honor for an artist to exhibit in the old, beautiful halls at Frogner. There is an exciting challenge in the assignment: Here the artist must formulate an attitude towards Gustav Vigeland himself. Exactly that is no issue for Elise Storsveen. Like the great sculptor, she tackles life themes such as birth, bodily decay and ageing. The title work “The heat waves” is not about global warming as you might think, but about climate change inside the female body. Menopause, the menopause, is for many both a shameful and an unpleasant topic. I love that Elise Storsveen explores this transformation in her own body with interest and fascination. In the large exhibition hall in the museum, five flat textile figures are displayed using appliqué technique with hand stitching. UNUSUAL BACKGROUND: There is no doubt that these expressions would look even better against a white wall. But the slightly shrill combinations also help to strengthen the experience of the tiringness of the experience depicted. The discomfort is palpable. The textile bodies hang from the ceiling in thin threads in front of the wall. Here she has sewn various shapes and structures into the surface. Sometimes spirals, other times bubbles like in a bubble wrap. These shapes are highlighted with paint. The sketches of these bodies are made during hot flashes, as an attempt to record the experience. There are really five strong self-portraits, where the discomfort is palpable. The figures look like they are about to get out of their good skin. There are bodies out of step with themselves. One is squatting with a desperate look, another in the middle of nowhere with three tits and a face streaked with discomfort. A third figure shows a kind of bodily doubling, like a Siamese twin, where the two upper bodies are heading in separate directions. I like the almost graphic way she works with form. It is also very nicely done in terms of colour: A body is pale turquoise with orange spirals like circles of heat placed around the ravaged body. Another almost completely abstracted figure is rendered in shimmering bright blue and deep blue with a phosphorescent yellow interweaving of lines around the head. This is a powerful and raw depiction of private bodily experiences. As I stand in the museum hall, I feel that I am really starting to dread it! MORE FREAKING? When I see such figures, the artist succeeds in transferring the discomfort to me as a spectator. Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen Demanding interior Another challenge that lies in the assignment for an artist who will exhibit at the Vigeland Museum is that you have to create your works with the rather prominent brick-red wall and the variegated, almost animal-print-like stone floor in mind. The unique interior is protected, so here it is important to create something that works within these rather demanding frameworks. In the title work “Hetebølger” this works quite well, even if the figures occasionally differ slightly in terms of color against the wall’s value. The fatigue in the subtle color collisions underlines the theme, and the color red also accentuates the experience of the bodies boiling. COMPLICATIONS: “Birth” is an application work without a bottom, so that the wall itself forms the background. It doesn’t work very well. Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen The interior breaks up the works, unfortunately, this is not how it works in the other halls. In the nine-metre-long frieze depicting a birth, the expression dissolves completely. The powerful black grid she has created perhaps symbolizes the experience of being trapped in pain. This could have been an expressive tool if it didn’t have to fight for attention. Not only with the many different clear color values in the textile itself, but also the floor and the back wall. Here I think Elise Storsveen should have done us and her own project a favor and made a fabric base in a neutral colour. Perhaps she can argue that chaos and dissolution fit well in the depiction of a birth. But here I don’t feel that the color collisions add anything like in the Hetebølger hall. Here, that work completely kills both form-wise and colour-wise. THE BATTLE FOR ATTENTION: Here, the interior beats the beautiful color tones to death. Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen Doesn’t come into its own The last work in particular, “Mellomrom”, does not fare much better. Here she works with fragile, paperclip-like shapes and soft color tones that are completely broken up by the visually noisy interior. That the Vigeland Museum’s halls are protected is a fact that cannot be exaggerated. But in the face of a colorful and diverse project like Storsveens, one should probably go a few more rounds to see if there were ways to create a more suitable framework around the projects. Equally, the exhibition, and not least the heat waves, made a strong impression on me. news reviews Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen Title: “Hetebølgene” Artist: Elise Storsveen Place: Vigelandmuseet Date: 03 February–14. May 2023 WATCH ON news TV: What should you know about women’s menopause, and how should we deal with its consequences? The myths are many, and it’s time to bust some of them. British production from 2022.
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