Kristin Austreid
Dag for natt / Day for Night
Exhibition spaces on the 1st floor
23.02.23 – 02.04.23

In the exhibition Dag for natt / Day for Night, Kristin Austreid shows a series of paintings that explore surface and space based on photo­graphy of various objects. The works are in a cons­tructed tension between figur­ation and abst­raction.

The artist zooms in on stains, tears, or other trivial traces of surfaces that indicate use and the passing of time. In the paintings, Austreid adds optically disorienting qualities and light pheno­mena that indicate a different, perhaps digital, reality. In the paintings, the light helps shape the subject of the image. The light is mani­fested on the surfaces as reflective or pene­trating and describes the surfaces as closed or open. Several works are motivated by over­lapping and con­flic­ting light sources, which create subtle logical gaps.

Sketches in the form of photo­graphs on paper are proces­sed by hand in small tableaus before being re-photo­graphed. In the alter­nation between manual and digital processing, the subject of the image is gradually reshaped and perspectives are disturbed, affected by the light and what the lens captures. With this material as the starting point for the paintings, Austreid immerses herself in colour shading and the model­ling of surfaces and applies the paint in thin layers with barely visible brush­strokes. What remains after a long process are paintings in which the origin and identity of the objects pictured are shifted and formal qualities emerge. The work reflects the entangle­ment of techno­logical and manual methods of creating images and is a place for the exploration of ratios and spatial per­ception.

The exhibition title refers to a film tech­nique, "Day for Night", where a night scene is originally filmed in daylight. The tech­nique creates a strange light that can be perceived as a para­doxical mixture of day and night.

Kristin Austreid (b. 1985) lives and works in Bergen. She received an MFA from the Art Academy in Bergen (2014). She has had solo exhi­bitions at, among others, Entrée, Bergen; Galleri LNM, Oslo; and Hauge­sund Kunst­forening. She has partici­pated in several group exhi­bitions, including at Kristian­sand Kunst­hall; Stavanger Art Museum; QB Gallery, Oslo; Kunst­nernes Hus, Oslo; in addition to Høst­utstil­lingen and Vestlands­utstil­lingen. Austreid's work has been acquired by Bergen Munici­pality, Oslo Munici­pality, Equinor Art Collection, Hauge­sund Billed­galleri’s Collection, and Burgdorf City Collec­tion, Switzerland.

The exhibition is supported by the Visual Artists Compensation Fund and Arts Council Norway.