The prize from the Fund for Art and Design Students 2023
Bachelor:
Årets FKDS-pris ble tildelt Karen Berge (BA3) under åpningen av bachelor medium- og materialbasert kunst sin avgangsutstilling Welcome and goodbye.
Berge sine arbeider hadde tittel Litt avmystifisering av rusavhengighet og bestod av:
Mapping the county bus driving with obstacles – demystifying drug addiction series
Laminated A4 paper, chalk drawing (scanned for publ. purposes), 2022
Mapping the local bus driving with obstacles/Portrait of a blue road
Sculpture, 20x4x12 cm, 2023
Master:
Trond Sebastian Rusten (MA2, tekstil)
Juryens begrunnelse: The recipient of this year’s scholarship from the Fund for Art and Design Students has made a work that genuinely impressed the jury with its physical, transformative, and sensuous qualities.
The work speaks about impermanence, vulnerability, and about the inherent language found in the individual materials. A story about existence, about life, and the end. Whispering and with consideration. The work is intensely present in the room. The colors are muted, but the smell draws us into the undergrowth and into the ground. It becomes the ground, the ground we step over. The various components have been carefully worked into a whole that references the history of textiles and a design language that has followed man throughout the ages.
In creating a contrast between the meticulous preparation and crafting of the work with its impermanence, this artist challenges commonly held notions of labor and value that have broad relevance for contemporary society. The prize winner is from the field of textile art but has worked more referentially than directly with textiles. Using a range of natural materials such as spruce needles and birch roots, the artist creates not only a seeming rug or carpet but a landscape, a picture, a commentary on the use and distribution of resources. However, also applying specific patterns and techniques loaded with cultural references.
The project is a pertinent example of what contemporary crafted art is, details thought through, materially reflected and sensuously enchanting.
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This year the jury was surprisingly unanimous in its decision, but have chosen to give honorary mention to one other student as well.
The FKDS extends an honorary mention to Maria Viirros from the print area. Viirros has thoroughly investigated the print medium and has used their background as a tattoo artist to expand a particular part of the print history. In their MA project, they display sophisticated prints that represent bodily drawing; they hand print flashes inspired by historical designs and are further supposed to offer tattoos that have undergone a digital transformation by AI from a conversation between the artist and the human canvas as part of the exhibition. Viirros frames the print practice through sophisticated skills and social and cultural reflections on tattoos as bodily imprints and gendered markers and expands our understanding of contemporary printmaking.
Jury for the FKDS prize 2023:
Siri Skjerve (external member)
Kamil Kak (former prize winner)
Nicholas Jones (exhibition curator)
Boel Christensen-Scheel (dean)
Christine Hammer Krokstrand (programme coordinator BA)