Pia Antones Rognes:
Å begjære vold

Throughout the exhibition Rognes uses synthetic materials to create large, distorted bodily shapes that convey a strong physical presence. A sharply coloured pink sculpture, nine meters in size, coils down from the tall ceiling and dominantly throughout the room. This headless, multi-armed creature consisting of boneless limbs, is handsewn together in a way that it resembles scars in an incomplete or deformed body. This monstrous colon-like shape mounted on meat hooks reoccurs in the other sculptures we meet in this exhibition.

The artists’ characteristic use of synthetic materials, latex, fake fur, clip-on hair and sharp colours inflicts contradictory cultural associations onto the viewer. It’s a continuous play of positively and negatively charged objects. While the use of pink, purple and black materials seems visually appealing, the deformed shapes could be experienced as cold and lifeless. They make play of an aesthetic that both resembles plastic toys marketed towards little girls and simultaneously they refer to the sex industry and sex toys. The aggressive use of colours is also associated with something cheap and vulgar. In this way Rognes points out the bodily force of human desires, the aggressive want of something, and the the sensory experience that provides a ambivalent feeling of attraction and discomfort.

In their lack of camouflage beneath the human skin, the sculptures reveal an internal chaos that seems to grow out of control. Through shape and surface, Rognes is searching for a language to deal with the unsaid, unseen and shameful in our destructive forces. The exhibition title underlines the contradiction that emerges through several binary opposites; desire/disgust, body/mind, subject/object, internal/external. The bodily language thus points out the complexity in what drives a person to cause harm to oneself to deal with difficult emotional conditions, and to the conflict and self-deception in the act of desiring violence.

The body is shown in a series of photographs where Rognes has invited the Icelandic photographer Magnús Elvar Jónsson to capture the human bodies encapsulated in her sculptural work. Jónsson has also contributed to the documentary “Looking for Monsters”, presented at the exhibition space’s black box, where Rognes explains her artistic practice and choice of theme.

Pia Antonsen Rognes (b. 1986, Trondheim) received her master’s degree in visual art at the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavik (2014) and her bachelor’s degree in textile art at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design (2012). In 2015 she received the Debutant price at the 39th Trøndelagsutstillingen for her work “As They Believe My Lying Body”. In 2013 she received a price for Best Artwork during the Norwegian Artists’ annual exhibition. In 2016 she presented the solo show “In This Fever of Defiance” at Gallery Soft in Oslo and in 2019 she will present a new exhibition at the Format Gallery in Oslo.