Attom Nova

Johannes Engelsen Espedal has a distinctive eye for beauty in the broken. For "Attom nova" he has taken as his starting point an old barn and disused irrigation pipes, materials he has found in his immediate surroundings in Kapp, Toten. These are materials no one wants anymore that he will resurrect in art. 

Espedal creates art where the viewer forgets that what is witnessed is actually "scrap". He achieves this by applying a sensitivity towards the materials and an ability to balance them against each other. Using blinds, wooden skis, corrugated iron, and window frames, Espedal creates new spaces and realities that appear to us as simultaneously alien and universal. Moreover, the works are often experienced as landscapes. They allude to our orientation in the world between two horizontal planes – the sky and the earth – and on the horizon as a distillation of this perspective. 

It is important that the materials he chooses is given time to mature: He finds them, surrounds himself with them over time, and waits until they present him an opportunity. This method, meticulous and organic, also draws parallels to an understanding of time and a way of life which we might associate with something rural: Just as the materials testify to the passing of time, the metal will rust, the paint will fade, and the planks eventually rot. 

Curator and producer: Kulturbyrået Mesén