Oh moveable horizon – where are you?
In the summer of 2015, Janne Kruse and Andreas Siqueland crossed the North Atlantic Ocean as crew on board two sailboats. The voyage from Aarhus, Denmark to St. John’s in Newfoundland, Canada, followed the Northern route via Shetland, The Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland. In the exhibition Roxy Firefly we journey through the wonderful, spiritual, mythical and mystical. The journey is used as a vehicle to translate and materialize these abstract concepts.
The North Atlantic is not just a distance drawn between two continents or a name on a map under the wings of a plane. To embark on a perilous sea voyage is today an anachronistic choice – a choice not taken lightly. In the boat, we see and feel the waves, the horizon emerges, disappears again. Time is displaced as we rediscover places in ourselves.
The North Atlantic passage is bound by myths. According to the Navagatio myth, the Irish monk St. Brendan is said to have sailed to America already in the 7th Century. To prove that it was possible to cross the ocean in a leather boat, Tim Severin reconstructed the boat and crossed the ocean from Ireland to Canada in the years 1976 –1977. Likewise, the discoveries made by Helge and Anne Ingstad at L’Anse aux Meadows showed evidence that Leif Eriksson could have reached Vinland. It was on the waters of the North Atlantic Jens Munk in the 17th century looked for a way to the East and the Titanic made her famous maiden voyage in 1912. This mythical space is also what Bas Jan Ader ventured into when he set sail for Europe in his project In Search of the Miraculous (1975). The artist disappeared at sea and the boat Ocean Wave was found drifting off the Irish coast. Today there are few who sail this Northern route.
Myths are poor navigational material when sailing in unknown waters. If myth is form, then the physical journey is content. The journey offers a place of imagination where linguistic and contextual constraints can unfold. The body as eyewitness establishes a presence. From an artistic point of view, it is interesting to engage such myths and experience what this journey means today. The act of making work through the journey places the artists in a position to ask fundamental questions concerning a process in which knowledge is acquired through confronting situations, materials and people. The work is an attempt to make the invisible visible.
Janne Kruse (b. 1979, Denmark) works primarily with sculpture, but often draws sculptural issues into two-dimensional works. She examines the spatial potential of the encounter between the body and the world. Her work is created through meditative, performative and time-related investigations. Janne Kruse graduated from Oslo National Academy of the Arts and Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. Recently, she has exhibited at Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo; Eskilstuna Konstmuseum, Eskilstuna; Aiyo Space, Beijing; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; The Vigeland Museum; Oslo; Luda Gallery, St. Petersburg and Aarhus Kunsthal, Aarhus. Kruse is part of the artist collective Verdensteatret. Janne Kruse lives and works in Oslo.
Andreas Siqueland (b. 1973, Norway) is a graduate of Haut École d’Art et de Design in Geneva and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. His practice is concerned with the relationship of art to nature and notions of translation, re-enactment, and repetition. In 2013 he completed the fellowship programme at the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo with the project A Place for Painting, which included the construction of Winter Studio, a mobile outdoor studio displayed in the garden of F15 under Momentum Biennale 2011. Recent shows include Pleinairism at the Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Canada; Lands End at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts; The University of Chicago; and Painting Across the Atlantic at Regina Rex in New York. Besides his personal practice as a painter, Siqueland has since 2004 made performative and sculptural works together with Anders Kjellesvik in the artist duo aiPotu. Andreas Siqueland lives and works in Oslo.
Curator: Maria C. Havstam
The exhibiton is supported by:
Janne Kruse: Statens Utstillingsstipend, Grosserer L. F. Foghts Fond og Kulturrådet
Andreas Siqueland: Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond. International showing supported by OCA
