Scandinavia House

Marion Belanger (U.S. to Iceland, 2006): Mainly interested in the concepts of persistence and change and the way that boundaries demarcate difference, particularly in regards to the land, these photographs are abstract, transcending the depiction of the actual subject matter seen in the image. The artist earned her MFA from the Yale University School of Art where she was the recipient of both the John Ferguson Weir Award and the Schickle-Collingwood Prize, and her BFA from the College of Art & Design at Alfred University. Her photographs are included in many collections, including those at the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Museum of Art, the Yale University of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the International Center of Photography.

Lene Berg (Norway to U.S., 2007-08): Born in Oslo and currently based in Berlin, Berg’s projects often consist of several parts realized in different media, such as videos, books, and collages, presented separately or in installations. In her works she explores the relationship between contemporary images and inherited conventions, between clichés and facts, between politics and rules of narration. During the last years she has been particularly focused on the distribution of ideas, and the conditions of artistic freedom in relation to political agendas. She was trained as a filmmaker at Dramatiska Institutet in Stockholm.

Sandra Binion (U.S. to Sweden, 2007): An interdisciplinary artist who makes live performances, video installations, and visual artworks, Binion’s watercolors straddle the figurative and the abstract. She has presented over 30 performances and installations since 1978 at numerous festivals, galleries, museums, and theaters in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including the Hyde Park Art Center, PAC/edge Performance Festival Chicago, Columbia College Art + Design Gallery, Plan B in Santa Fe, Galerie Nuova Icona in Venice, Italy, University of California, Berkeley, Kunstraum, Stuttgart, and Powerhouse Gallery, Montreal.

Kjell Bjørgeengen (Norway to U.S., 2003-04): In stating that his art is an investigation of reality, Bjørgeengen has recently put an emphasis on working live with a wide range of musicians. The live works feature the production of flicker videos, which have also been presented in various exhibitions since 2002. The “flicker” is sound given to video sync, thus becoming video and revealing the self-identity of the two. Evolving as a counteraction to an easy intellectual approach to viewing art, the flicker works can be optically challenging, as they are perceived on a physical level and they sometimes resist the viewer, or vise versa. While his artwork has many of the traditional hallmarks of the art-making process, its purpose is to blur the line between art and non-art. Bjørgeengen holds degrees in Sociology, Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Oslo.

Ole Martin Lund Bø (Norway to U.S., 2006-07): Bø’s approach to creating art is concept-based, and therefore techniques and materials vary for each project. His most recent works look at the authoritarian visual rhetoric of power, both used in political and commercial mass communication as well as in architecture and design. He probes various constructions of content as manifested on a building’s façade, a page’s layout, or as a politician’s speech. These strategies represent a simplified but powerful language. His work focuses on this leading and seductive interaction and its relation to content, for example by re-contextualization or isolation of imagery and form.

Unn Fahlstrøm (Norway to U.S., 2005-06): For this exhibition, Fahlstrøm opens a more intimate sphere of references. All of Me displays the artist's lips while she sings, whereas DMZ is based on video recordings from the demilitarized zone at the border between North and South Korea. These signs of sentimentality and nostalgia are counterpointed by the absoluteness of Unn’s formal criteria, yet what immediately appears as a personal motive does not acquire the character of univocal affectivity, and is represented in a tone of discreet humor. Aesthetics of Separation plays with complex paradoxes that challenge the spectator by questioning how the visible is to be seen. The short way from red to blue. The long way from blue to red. presents a personal and poetic interpretation of color.

Nina Katchadourian (U.S. to Finland, 2002): Born in California, Nina grew up spending every summer on a small island in the Finnish archipelago, where she still spends part of each year. Her work exists in a wide variety of media including photography, sculpture, video and sound. She has exhibited domestically and internationally at places such as PS1/MoMA, the Serpentine Gallery, New Langton Arts, Artists Space, SculptureCenter, and the Palais de Tokyo. A graduate of Brown University, Katchadourian earned her M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego and was most recently part of the Whitney Independent Study Program.

Are Mokkelbost (Norway to U.S., 2008-09): Currently a resident artist at International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), Mokkelbost works in many mediums including collage, digital art and sound art. He is currently working on two public space commissions in Norway and is a member of the band KILLL. He most recently participated in We’ll Know When We Get There, with Lee Ranaldo and Leah Sin.