Galleri BOA, Oslo
15 – 31 October 2010
Moving from the tentative to the definite, the second exhibition will show the artists’ completed works.
Unlike most group exhibitions, Subject Matter does not work within the framework of a particular argument or topic. The artists have been asked to comply with the three-part structure of the exhibition project but have otherwise been free to investigate areas of personal interest and indulge in the process of their artistic work.
Rather than having to accommodate to the authoritarian viewpoint of the curator, this strategy leaves the exhibition without an overarching theme for the works to support
and thereby creates a space for the articulation of the individual artworks. If art is a way of comprising our understanding of the world, this exhibition presents a tangle of opinions and expressions instead of one single message; a democratic plurality of world-views.
As the project enquires into the artistic process it also raises questions about how this particular openness affects both the process and the artworks. The transparency may prompt courageousness or cautiousness in terms of ideas, choices, and actions of the artists or lead to a certain degree of staging in order to uphold a distance between the private and the public.
Furthermore, the exhibition investigates what kind of decisions the artists have made in order to translate their initial idea into a work of art. Is the relationship obvious and straightforward or has the work seemingly departed from the initial idea by way of another, stronger articulation, due to technical difficulties or simply by a change of heart?
