Glass og levede lys

A light in the dark
Ever so often we find ourselves engulfed in darkness or even in dark times, falling and fumbling, looking for a glimmer of hope or for a tiny guiding spark to penetrate the gloomy shade in the hopes that this light might lead us on a trail out of the stark dark.

Apocalyptic analogies aside, the artist Solveig Lønseth has for the past few years been blinded by a mysterious lamp that resides in her cabin on a tiny island in the northern part of Norway. This lamp has been planted there for years on end like a lighthouse only waiting for the artist to discover that it wasn't even electrical at all! Once pried open it revealed a little candlelight. This is no small feat for a waxed fire considering the constant heavy weather, winds, and rain on the island and somehow the entire structure, glass, wax, and all became a poetic struggle with the dramatic dullness of island life and of hours upon hours spent on daily dealings with the rhythms of the day. The walks to the beach - in search of remnants and white stones cast away from the wild waves of the dark waters. Of days when the view from the window was more alive than any painting could ever hope to be.

Residing close to one of these Norwegian windows was a little wayward lamp, a much more modest version of a lighthouse but not wholly unlike Virginia Woolf's idea of a shining beam seen from a cabin window. So much so that her words seem fitting for the exhibition.

“What is the meaning of life? That was all a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”

Virginia wrote it better than I ever could but there you have it - Solveig Lønseth's five small miracles of unexpected sparks of light in the dark.

HERDSLA
ONNA
MÅNIN
FLOA
MELKA

The works in the show are all made as a true copy of the original lamp. Consisting of glass, linseed blackened steel and silver, beeswax, stearin and candlelight.

-Mathilde Carbel