Lise Linnert og Jannik Abel:
Håndtere

08. October – 08. November 2026

Free entrance

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“Håndtere” is an exhibition by artists Lise Linnert and Jannik Abel. Both work entirely by hand, with time and the hands themselves as their most important tools.

Where Linnert uses needle and thread, Abel uses knife and axe; where Linnert works with textiles, Abel works with wood and bone. Both gather and collect, and then slowly but steadily shape their materials, again and again.

The word håndtere is derived from the Old Norse word heimta, meaning “to bring home.” Over many years of artistic practice, both artists have worked through the loss of those closest to them—losses so painful that remaining still became impossible. This is particularly evident in the repetition found in their work. The needle passing silently through the fabric countless times, with a heavy or light hand. The steel edge of the axe and knife moving through the wood again and again, until the sound becomes part of its own echo.

Abel og Linnert.

Jannik Abel.

Lise linnert.

Lise linnert «Hver dag (365 dager)» (2022 – 2025), resirkulerte biter av gasbind vevet eller tegnet med tråd og strimler av plantefargede stoffrester, festet til rester av akvarellpapir.

In the exhibition “Håndtere”, Linnert and Abel each present one project: Linnert with “Hver dag (365 dager)” and Abel with “De Hellige”. They also present a collaborative work in the form of a collection. Both artists have created numerous socially engaged projects in which others have been invited to participate. In this project, they invite visitors into the core of their sources of inspiration. A large table will be set up in the exhibition space, where Linnert and Abel will share their own sources of inspiration, in the hope that they will create ripples that reach others. As the Old Norse word heimta means “to bring home,” visitors will not take an object home with them, but inspiration. On the table, visitors will find personal objects, photographs, sound recordings from Abel’s forest, tools, and small objects from the artists’ studios that would otherwise never be shown.

Hver dag

Lise Linnert’s project “Hver dag (365 dager)” (2022–2025) is connected to a very particular period in her life.

“It starts in my own life, with a small piece of gauze, approximately 12 x 8 cm. It had been wrapped around a tube as protection where nutrition was passed into the stomach of Harald, my husband, who could not eat in any other way. I changed the dressing every day and attached the used piece to a sheet of watercolour paper, noting the date and a few words. Then I wove or sewed a response. Some days I had no words, no colour or thread, and the gauze remained as it was.”

De hellige

In his project “De hellige” (2026), Jannik Abel returns to the beginning, seeking to understand why things have become what they are in our Western patriarchal, late-capitalist and violent world. He turns to some of the earliest artistic expressions we know: goddess figurines. Created over an astonishing 50,000 years from wood, bone and stone, these small figures depict women with triangles, circles, holes, lines and spirals; maternal bodies with breasts that nursed and bellies that carried life.

With the transition to agricultural societies 4,000–6,000 years ago, the goddess myth was suppressed and forced underground. Gradually, the understanding of the sacred shifted from something within us and within the earth itself to something outside us, in the heavens, embodied in a male god. Abel has seen goddesses in museums throughout the Western world, but never seen them gathered together. After beginning to collect pieces of wood for this project, Abel began seeing them everywhere in nature—in a natural collection.

Jannik Abel.

The artists have received funding for the exhibition through the Regionale utstillingsmidler administered by Kunstsentrene i Norge.

Lise Linnert (b. 1964) lives and works in Oslo. She studied at Evanston Art Institute and Glassell School of Art, Houston, USA. Linnert’s artistic practice is characterised by a strong interest in human relationships and a belief in the power of the hands. Through different media, she explores art as a means of entering into dialogue, paying attention and creating change. Her practice follows two parallel paths. One branch addresses social and political injustice and invites collaboration and collective participation. The other takes its starting point in her own everyday experiences, the personal and what is closest to her.

Jannik Abel (b. 1973, Oslo) studied at the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1990s and has exhibited at a range of institutions and in public spaces both nationally and internationally. Themes such as belonging, vulnerability, inheritance and impermanence are central to Abel’s practice. The artist lives and works in Nesodden, and over the past five years has worked primarily with installations in the forest. Demanding physical actions have been transformed into artworks, created entirely by hand and with simple tools such as saws, knives and axes. In this way, Abel seeks to comment on—and create a counterweight to—the overconsumption and environmental crisis that characterise society today.

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