The MA Exhibition 
Picnic

Sasha Azanova, Iris Bengtsson, Malin Arnedotter Bengtsson, Trude Berg, Charlotte Besuijen, Marte Dahl, Jason Dunne, Lars Morten Elstad Rehnlund, Matias Grøttum, Runa Halleraker, Eleni Ieremia, Simone Jarvis, Ji Jia, Siavash Kheirkhah, Håvard Kranstad, Fredrik Landevåg, Kari Ann Lending Kleiveland, Solveig Lien Granberg, Jara Marken, Oda Monslaup Ese, Sonja Ovaskainen, Hanna Pherson, Renate Prokopcika, Peppi Reenkola, Selina Rosenborg, Julie Schie Olsen, Al Spence

Installation view from the MA-exhibition 2022: Picnic: Photo: Bjarte Bjørkum.

Each spring, Bergen Kunsthall hosts the graduation exhibition with students from the Master’s Programme in Fine Art at UiB’s Faculty of Art, Music and Design (KMD). This year, twenty-seven artists from eleven countries present their work in Picnic, a large-scale exhibition spanning the institution and its adjacent public gardens, curated by Randi Grov Berger.

The unusual circumstances under which these young art students were educated cannot go unacknowledged. The tremendous impact of the pandemic is palpable in Picnic, which represents an important moment for an emerging generation of artists to share their works publicly, united and unmuted. Demonstrating great innovation and resilience, the exhibition showcases a wide range of media, techniques, and materials, whilst contributing to a multitude of topics central to current artistic discourse.

The sudden and reoccurring disruptions that punctuated the last two years have prompted profound doubt and unease with the systems that structure and control our daily lives, and the dependence of these systems on material and capital flows within an increasingly accelerated and unbalanced global economy. A number of the works on display confront such systems, while others question the contemporary role of the artist. Several projects reveal haunting memories and personal journeys. A deep concern for our natural environment and future is foregrounded in other works, triggering the senses whilst probing issues of identity and belonging.

These insights and observations are generously shared through immersive installations, large-scale paintings, sculptural objects, instructional texts, videos, photographs, sound works, readings, performances, therapeutic sessions, ephemeral gestures in public space, inventive applications of craft traditions, and, in one case, a musical.

The yearly graduation exhibition marks the transition between art education and professional practice. Picnic celebrates the transition as well from winter to spring. Come spring, we can yet again improvise excursions off the beaten path, momentarily abandoning civilisation to enjoy a spontaneous, open-air feast. We prepare for the ever-changing weather, and for nature’s surprises. Presenting works that are bold, risk-taking, delicate, and vulnerable, this year’s graduates suggest a breaking away from the formal whilst adopting the picnic’s collective spirit.

Seminar
Thu 5 May 5 10:00
To “picnic” is to converge informally, to enjoy company, conversation, food, and fresh air. As per picnic etiquette, each guest participates by bringing something to the occasion. For this year’s graduate seminar, we pack for an eventful day. Beginning with a swim at Nordnes sjøbad, we continue with a full day of activities led by our hostess, Emma Fended from House of Friele.

The program includes artist talks by Marco Bruzzone and Marthe Elise Stramrud, and a lecture exploring the picnic through an art historical lens by the formidable Gunnar Danbolt. We invite you to bring your own blanket for a picnic served under the Japanese cherry trees at Lille Lungegårdsvannet. There will be performances, music, a catalogue launch, and a commencement speech by artist David Horvitz. The day concludes with a critic’s circle and cocktails. Sign up to join the (free!) adventure!

Iris Bengtsson: Next Time We Meet on Broadway. Photo: Bjarte Bjørkum.

Al Spence, Kertyschoo! Photo: Bjarte Bjørkum

Malin Arnedotter Bengtsson, Månen. Photo: Bjarte Bjørkum.

Commencement Speech

April 5, 2021


Dear Artist,

I am writing to you. I am writing to you because I am here and you are there. I am
writing to you because letters are good excuses for reflection and extended
journeying thoughts. Because letters do journey, in a sense. They are sent from me
to you, they travel, from late night Los Angeles to you in Bergen. It’s been a while
since I’ve been in to Norway, and I miss it fondly - the crows, the canned mackerel
with tomatoes, the guy in a restaurant who didn’t think I could eat the lutefisk who I
proved wrong.

Art school, I feel, is a strange kind of school. Your graduation does not really mark a
before and after in a professional sense, the way other schools might demarcate, like
law school for example. This is because you were already an artist before you came
here. And you are still an artist now, hopefully. Graduating does not turn you into an
artist or make you more of an artist. But what is it? For me it is a celebration of a time
of being together amongst others. Shared experiences, shared learnings, shared
questions, shared friendships. Look around at each other, you are the school.

I am going to start with a story. I heard this from a friend about a commencement
speech delivered to a graduating class at Cal Arts, an art school in California. My
friend heard the story from another friend, who was graduating and witnessed the
speech. It was Chris Burden, the performance artist, who was giving the speech.
Supposedly Chris Burden came out on stage and looked at the graduating class. He
then basically said something like the following:

I went to school, I graduated, but thinking back, I didn’t really learn anything in
school, and I learned everything after graduating. And so I hope you are in the same
position as me, and that you haven’t learned anything yet, and you are about to
embark on your real education right now.

That was it, talking less than a minute. Then he walked off the stage. Amazing. I
wonder what the parents thought. But I’m not going to do that to you.

I’ve thought hard and long about what to write to you. And I am still conflicted. There
are the standard commencement cliches. They offer advice. They present didactic
parables. They talk about the hardships of life to come. They discuss the realities.
They play with your emotions, the anticipation of what is to come, the completion of
what is about to end. The soon goodbyes. They make you laugh and just as easy
make you cry. They say to endure, to persist, to continue. Giving you inspiration and
strength. You will trip, stumble, fall. You will fail, and you will continue to fail, but that
is life and that is what makes you stronger. And that your voice is important, and that
the world needs you. Yes this is all true, I think. But that’s not who I am. I am not one
of formalities. So instead I am writing you this letter, and going to drop it in a mailbox
down the street from my studio and let it find its way to you.

I could be like Chris Burden. Maybe I should have just mailed you a blank paper.
Maybe it has one small sentence written on it: the future. Or: what I learned at art
school. Or: your diploma. Or maybe just blank and folded. Yes, blank and folded.
Recently I was reading Greek stories to my seven year old daughter and it
mentioned the etymology of the word diploma: to fold twice.

Here is your diploma.

I was recently traveling on a trip to France with a friend who I went to school with.
We spent the morning traveling by train and foot to reach a town north of Paris. It
was the town where Van Gogh spent his final days, where he was buried. My friend
wanted to visit his grave. After visiting the grave we bought some cold chicken and
potatoes from a deli on the main street of the town and found some grass in a small
park to sit on. Our legs were tired from walking most of the day. We picked the cold
chicken with our fingers and threw the bones in a bush. It was one of my most
memorable French meals, our impromptu little picnic. I wanted to share this picnic
with you, while you are eating your picnic today. This story has no climax or twist. It
doesn’t really say anything. For me it is an image in my memory, of two people,
whose lives became intertwined in school ten years prior. And for me this was the
real worth of school. The friendships that continued on through life, as if the binding
of school stays taut. The conversations that journey through time and space. These
conversations, maybe between only two or three people, are micro art worlds. It is
the art world that you inhabit, that you create, micro art worlds.

I want to tell another story.

One day, a few years after graduating from an MFA from Bard college, I was walking
through a park in Brooklyn when I ran into an artist who I had went to school with.
After the customary:

hi, hello, how are you, long time no see, what are you doing here, what have you
been doing, what’s going on….

He then asked me something that shocked me.

Do you still make work?

Was this a joke? No, it was said sincerely. “Yes,” I said. But it was clear that he
stopped. I thought being an artist was a lifetime commitment. How could someone
stop making work? Especially after going through school.

I would see others like him. Some would just stop temporarily. Like a brief hiatus.
Others would stop permanently, moving to some other focus in life. Certainly, though
you may deny it today, there are some of you here today who may end up in a
similar place. There is nothing wrong here. You can make art if you want to. You
don’t have to if you don’t want to anymore. But what if you want to, but something
has happened, you’ve lost a drive or a momentum. Maybe you will get stuck in the
stasis of everyday life. Maybe there’s a little voice in your head questioning what you
are doing, and over time that voice gets louder and louder. When you leave your
school you are also leaving this invisible architecture, this clock like structure
creating rhythm and a false sense of urgency. You no longer have urgent deadlines.
How do you hold onto this urgency? If your future self wants to stop making work.
Stop, it’s fine. But if you don’t want to stop, and you are slipping out of practice, you
will have to find your own urgency. This could be a good motto, if you find yourself
abandoned somewhere, without deadlines, to find your own urgency. This can mean
different things to different people. Maybe it’s not urgency, but a joy, or a love.
Maybe love itself is a form of urgency. There are no art world theories for you here.
You have to make your own meaning why you do what you do, and you have to hold
onto this. Sometimes I miss that feeling I had when I was an 18 year old artist and I
didn’t know anything, and I had enthusiasm for everything, without a drop of
cynicism.

Here’s another memory from my graduate school. It is the summer. We are driving
north from the campus. It is Upstate New York. There are farms and orchards on this
small road. I see a small red apple forming on the branch of an apple tree. Its color
catches my eye as we drive by it. I look back at my friend in the back seat and he
silently acknowledges that he also saw the red of the apple. This memory has stuck
with me for over a decade. And this definitely does not have any point. But for some
reason I wanted to write it down and tell you this.

Here’s something that happened recently, which I’ve wanted to tell for sometime. I’ve
been waiting for the right moment, and maybe this is it. Recently I was at an opening
dinner for a friend’s exhibition. I was seated next to an art collector who also ran a
small gallery. Though I might sound disparaging, this person was very nice. He
shared his soft-shell crab with me, and some of the sushi that was too raw for him to
eat. So we started chatting. He asked me who I was and what I did. I told him I was
an artist, and he wanted to figure out exactly what I did. He asked me my name. I
spelled it out for him letter by letter and he looked me up on Instagram. And then I
watched in horror and amusement his fingers and his eyes in full speed as he glided
back in time, rapidly sliding across images, caressing his phone, trying to get a
sense of what it was that I do. He couldn’t figure me out. This is because I don’t fill
my instagram with pictures of my work. Maybe some photos of my daughter, maybe
some sea urchins, some mushrooms, or some flowers, or some nice rocks, or a
couple of ocean views, some spam, a detail of a new book.

Where is your work? What is your work?

He either got bored or frustrated and stopped flicking his finger. For a moment I
thought he might injure his finger, or eye. I was amused that he couldn’t figure me
out. I was satisfied specifically because I did not want him to be able to understand
me with a flick of his finger and a quick glance of his eye. To digest me in a matter of
seconds. To say, “Oh I get it, this is what you do.” I don’t want to preach about social
media here. We all have our own ideas. Some people hate it. Some people love it.
Some people use it because they want to. Some feel they are supposed to. Some
people use it because they feel they have to. Some people over self promote. Some
people under self promote. You can do whatever it is you want. You should do what
it is you want. But I think the thing I hope to agree on here is that the extent of what
we do, in all its complexities, cannot be consumed, digested, “gotten,” in a matter of
seconds, in a simple act of convenience. This little flick of the finger. There is more to
you here. I am not saying to delete your Instagram account. But maybe, if you want,
complicate it a little.

I wanted to tell you one last story, from the actual friend at Cal Arts who witnessed
the speech. He said our mutual friend got it all wrong. It was not Chris Burden. It was
Bruce Nauman, in his cowboy boots and cowboy hat. And my friend wasn’t even
there. He heard this from someone else from some previous year. Bruce Nauman
walks on stage. He looks out at all the graduating students and starts speaking very
very slowly:

When I graduated from art school I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do.
And I hope that today when you graduate from art school you also have no idea what
you are going to do. Thank you.

My friend emphasized the slowness in his voice:
Wheeeeeennnnnn Iiiiiiiiii graaaaaaaaddddduuuuuuaaaaateeedddd
frommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm art schooooooollllllll…

You get the point.

I will end it here. I’m still not sure what the apple story means. So congratulations to
you all today for where you are today for how you got here and where you are going.
I hope your picnic is going well. Did anyone bring any sushi? If you haven’t heard the
joke about the farm raised whale at your local sushi restaurant, you can ask Randi
about it.

Congratulations.

I mean: Connnnnnggggrrrraaaaattttttttttuuuuuulllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaations.

- David Horvitz