Gallery Dikemark / Dikemark Art Arena
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Welcome to the opening ceremony
Thursday, May 18th, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Opening speech by Lars Elton.

TIME DARKNESS LIGHT is the title of the exhibition by Karen I. Bye and Liv Zachrisson at Galleri Dikemark, where they each show their own parallel visual installations. The landscape is their common starting point: the landscape as a motif, the landscape as an idea, the landscape as a reflection of the time we live in. The looking outward, and the looking inward.

We experience that our visual language has several meeting points, and rests on a common foundation. In the way we use the landscape, we often touch on the same themes, but with different approaches in terms of material use and techniques. Through the work on the exhibition project, we have had the opportunity to examine both our lines of connection and differences, while at the same time delving into our own works.

Karen Bye shows a series of new works on paper in smaller formats, together with a large site-specific work in charcoal and acrylic on field hospital canvas. In this work, the motif is a forest landscape, tentatively outlined, suggested, as remnants of a memory, or time. The light and shadows through the window in the gallery space will affect the work through the days, the time, the weather.
For many years, Bye has made large drawing and painting installations, with charcoal or pigment, acrylic and gesso on paper and canvas. Works that extend from ceiling to floor. She usually shows them in combination with works in small formats. The pictures thematize nature and the landscape, both as a place of refuge and a battlefield, or as the scene of natural disasters. The large format emphasizes that it is not about landscape depiction in the usual sense, and means that the viewer is invited into the picture.

In this exhibition, Liv Zachrisson shows an installation consisting of a large image element juxtaposed with small-format oil paintings. The large image is coated with beeswax, where oil pastels suggest a landscape. The smaller paintings appear in series, which approach and reflect on landscapes both figuratively and abstractly. Zachrisson works from a bodily awareness, a feeling that the body leads the process, a bodily memory. Over the years, she has made a number of large installations. With a conceptual approach as a starting point, she has often used several different forms of expression, including drawing, painting, sculpture, video, text, vocal and sound, in the same work. Her language is characterized by abstract and symbolic figures, and moves between opposites in the span between the strict and the free, the sharp and the unclear, the dark and the light.

Both artists have studios in Dikemark, and the exhibition has been created in collaboration with Dikemark Kunstarena and Trafo Kunsthall .

Karen Ingeborg Bye , (b. 1954, Oslo, lives and works in Asker), is a graduate of the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts, and the Norwegian School of Crafts and Art. She has had an extensive number of solo exhibitions, and has been purchased by, among others, the National Museum and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Bye has been awarded a number of scholarships, and has received the State Scholarship for Senior Artists since 2014. https://www.kareningeborg.no

Liv Zachrisson (b.1958 in Malmö, lives in Oslo, works in Asker), is educated at the Norwegian Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo and the Norwegian School of Crafts and Art. She has had a large number of solo exhibitions, and has participated in several group and joint exhibitions in Norway and the Nordic countries. Zachrisson has been awarded a number of scholarships and has been purchased by, among others, Linköpings Kulturnämnd, Sørlandets Kunstmuseum and the Norwegian Arts Council. https://www.livzachrisson.no 

The gallery is open Thursdays 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM, Saturdays and Sundays 12:00 PM - 4:00 PM.

Address: Verkensveien 2, Asker
Bus 280 from Asker bus station.

The project is supported by the Norwegian Visual Artists' Aid Fund.