Eyvind Solli Andreassen: PP+1, 2022
The exhibition PP+1 is the result of embracing the unknown with open arms during a difficult time for everyone. It’s the willingness to share knowledge between different generations of craftsmen, production workers, and artists. It’s also the result of finding common ground among each other.
During the pandemic in 2020, like many others, I was laid off from work and decided to travel back to my hometown of Porsgrunn. Here, I was approached by Kunsthall Grenland and asked if I might be interested in working in the workshop they have at the Porsgrunn Porcelain factory since the artist residencies they had planned to use the workshop for had been postponed, like everything else in the world.
This resulted in a meeting with the small production team at the Porsgrunn Porcelain factory and their collective decades of experience with a material type I had not previously worked with. The works are also a nod to the knowledge and experience of a craft that exists in most homes around the world, but also as a warning that this is a knowledge that is slowly disappearing as machines take over work to increase production and people with this knowledge retire from companies without a learning program to pass on the knowledge to the next generation.
The exhibition also addresses the value of collaboration, helping and uplifting each other as small businesses in a period where many of us are struggling. I have looked at different ways to highlight three-dimensional objects, especially those with a lot of texture, and playing with the shadows that can occur on them. Together with the light company Affix, we designed and produced custom-made podiums with a built-in light source take advantage of the shadow that is cast from the bottom and up at the works due to the rough exterior surface.
The works in the exhibition was made at the Porsgrunn Porcelain factory, using Porsgrunn Porcelain clay and fired in the Porsgrunn Porcelain ceramic oven together with the production works of Porsgrunn Porcelain. Except for one work, which is made from colored porcelain clay at home in my own living room and fired in my own oven at my studio in Oslo.
PP+1 was shown at Gallery Format, Oslo, Norway in 2022
Captions
- PP, 2021, Porcelain, Photo credit: Thomas Tveter/Gallery Format
- ESA, 2021, 39xW32xL31 cm, colored porcelain, Photo credit: Thomas Tveter/Gallery Format
- Overview, exhibition space, Photo Credit: Thomas Tveter/Gallery Format
