Helen Hausland

Instar

13 August - 20 September 2020

A point becoming a line, becoming a three-dimensional object. Helen Hausland creates ceramic compositions by repeatedly placing thumb sized pieces of clay next to one another. Subtle manipulations creating dislocations without knowing what it will look like in the end. Time, repetition and self-chosen limitations are keywords in Hauslands process, and her background as massage therapist and years of ballet dancing dominates her approach to the material. The body's experience of working with repetition, timing and music is incorporated as a rhythmical language. Her objects carry traces of the process and the time spent creating the expression.
 
The title of the exhibition Instar refers to the word describing the stage in the development of a larva when changing skin. While the larva grows, it constantly keeps changing skin again and again, like a snake, and each of these stages is an instar. It still continues being a larva through all these changes, even though not as a larva within the same skin.
The artist considers every object in her exhibition an instar in different stages of development.  Each work a transition and a bridge of repetitions, all containing elements of what has been and what is to come. Hauslands works in between the two- and the three- dimensional, the subtle and the vigorous. Between improvisation and precise choreography. Her objects wants to be both. An imprint of time, materialized into physical form through the body's manipulation of the material. The body, like a metronome, making the process move forward. Point by point, like a pulse, a heart rhythm. A life being lived. An object growing, becoming.

Helen Hausland (b.1974) lives in Oslo and holds a studio at NTP (Norsk Teknisk Porselen) in Fredrikstad. She recently graduated from Oslo Academy Of The Arts with a master degree in medium- and material based art. She has exhibited in Kunstnerforbundet (2019) and Norske Kunsthåndverkeres Årsutstilling, KODE Museum, Bergen (2019). She has also been confirmed this year for the exhibition Norske Kunsthåndverkeres Årsutstilling 2020 in Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø, and been nominated for the prize as “This year`s newcomer ” by the magazine Bo Bedre in conjunction with their design prize award 2020. Helen Hausland will next year exhibit in Hå Gamle Prestegard, Jæren and Korundi Museum, Rovaniemi, Finland.