Stian Ådlandsvik

Convergence | 2010 | xerox copier, paper, copies | 100 × 64 × 61 cm
Outdone | 2012 | sledge, hinges | 67 × 17 × 135 cm
Abstract simplicity of need | 2012 | Installation view at Entrée Bergen
Abstract simplicity of need | 2012 | Installation view at Entrée Bergen
Take these hands #4 | 2012 | Ink-jet print on drywall | 60 × 80 cm
Take these hands #1 | 2012 | Ink-jet print on drywall | 60 × 80 cm
Inherent to the oeuvre of Stian Ådlandsvik is a yearning to understand products and materials. He uncovers the different layers in his own production, emphasising the process of making the work and the different stages of its development. They are often reorganised hybrids in which the constituent parts derive from precise origins through connections that have been explored, dissected, and made discernable through the unveiling of a certain logic or thought process.

Objects are evaluated and re-contextualised in the form of drawings, photographs and sculptures. They are parts of interconnected systems, consisting of a large number of interrelated and interdependent components ,which refer to transnational and transcontinental trade and production systems, but also to other relationships, as well as the context defined by the exhibition space.

Ådlandsvik links together his reference systems, oscillating between obvious, plausible; and opaque, mysterious components. Their different states, which are documented by the artist and incorporated into his work, range from the object of use to deconstructed machines that can barely function, and abstract objects whose traces, notched in the material, hint at an utilitarian context of another era.

The imperfect surfaces in his work suggest a yearning for a new materialistic language, whose reading is not only based on art history, but on a more direct way of understanding material as being the end product of human handling, in which surface imperfections are seen to exist for a reason, acquiring, in this way, a sense of meaning as well. It appears as though Ådlandsvik is suggesting a new ideal for the valuation of objects through knowledge of their past. His works are in fact an investigation into how value is ascribed to products, and how concealments might very well prove to bestow value onto dubious content, or onto no content at all.

Through these various layers of production, Stian Ådlandsvik unveils the previous contexts, applications and understandings of the materials he employs. In doing so, he overturns any former sense of convention and habit, giving new meaning to what is thought of as normal and ordinary. As a non-violent reaction to the status quo, reality is re-interpreted in an attempt to gain deeper insight into who and what surrounds us.