OPEN(rather than closed)

Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium managed to stay open in the first year of the Covid pandemic. Something that was celebrated in the exhibition title OPEN (rather than closed).

Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium’s exhibition programme for the 2020 season reflected the situation affecting both the arts sector and wider society this spring. On account of restrictions imposed to minimise the spread of coronavirus (Covid-19) we had to think in new and alternative ways. We were living through times of huge unpredictability and change for the individual and society as a whole. We spent much more time than usual in our local area and within the four walls of our house. The local and personal formed in various ways the basis for VKL’s programme of exhibitions and educational tools for 2020.

In the Project Room we presented the archival exhibition The Factory – an exhibition about Vestfos Cellulosefabrikk, a historic retrospective focusing on the actual buildings which today house VKL. In another section of this former cellulose factory we have a storeroom containing several art collections. The special circumstances surrounding this season gave us the opportunity to show a selection of the art which is to be found here in Vestfossen. Our main exhibition was called OPEN (rather than closed) – and drew for most part on works in the collection of VKL’s Artistic Director, Morten Viskum. We felt sure the exhibition would give our visitors a fascinating and enjoyable art experience.

Ever since we opened our doors in 2003 the thought has struck me: What would we do if the planned exhibition had to be abandoned at short notice? Shutting down has never been in the spirit of the Kunstlaboratorium. So I have always had the attitude that we should stay open, rather than closed, and I have therefore always had a backup ready somewhere in the back of my mind. It took a pandemic to make it a reality.

– Morten Viskum, Artistic Director

On April 2nd 2020, after a series of extraordinary board meetings, the board gave us the go-ahead to present an alternative exhibition programme to the one that was in preparation. A potential opening date was set for May 2nd, and in the space of four weeks we managed to create a new main exhibition and season profile that we would be proud to present to our visitors.

OPEN (rather than closed) consisted of mostly two-dimensional works by 39 different artists, spread across the four floors of the Main Building. The collection has been accumulated over a period of more than 30 years, since the first artwork was acquired in 1986. It embraces huge artistic variation and might be regarded as testimony to a collector’s activity on the national and international scene. It is a collection characterised by its breadth and depth of motif, expression, and structure. Acquisitions have been made on a random basis – guided by prevailing financial conditions, psychological states, and instinct. Every piece in the collection has its own story.

In 2013, a large portion of Viskum’s collection, such as it was at that point, was exhibited at VKL as 1986–2013 / An Artist Collecting Art. The works exhibited in 2020 were not on show then, indeed most have been acquired since 2013. There has been a marked focus in this period on the works of particular artists, including Bjarne Melgaard, Fredrik Værslev, Rose Wylie, and Jørgen Dobloug. This was also the case with OPEN (rather than closed), where a select handful of artists were afforded special attention. Nevertheless, in the way the exhibition juxtaposeed artworks and invited dialogue between a variety of art practices and expressions, it could be regarded as fundamentally relational and contextual. Although the majority of the artists on show belong to the established art scene, the collection is first and foremost personal and, as such, does not aspire to a consensus-oriented understanding of what constitutes quality in art.

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Installation photography: Nina Ansten

Participating artists

• Unni Askeland
• Ari Behn
• Joseph Beuys
• Sverre Bjertnæs
• Kadar Brock
• Jørgen Dobloug
• Ida Ekblad
• Carin Ellberg
• Marco Evaristti
• Matias Faldbakken
• H.M. Dronning Sonja
• Steinar Haga Kristensen
• Ann Cathrin November Høibo
• Thomas Kvam
• Line Larsen (VIRG)
• Markus Lüpertz
• Mickael Marman
• Paul McCarthy
• Bjarne Melgaard
• Agnes Moraux
• Edvard Munch
• Ulf Nilsen
• Hermann Nitsch
• Mathias Ma$arati Nordby
• Mikael Lo Presti
• Pushwagner
• Edgar Sarin
• Christoph Schellberg
• Will Schneider-White
• Joronn Sitje
• Kjartan Slettemark
• Sergei Tcherepnin
• Erik Tidemann
• Ståle Vold
• Fredrik Værslev
• Emily Wardill
• Andy Warhol
• Rose Wylie
• Øyvind Zahl