MELK

Unseen photo fair 2013

MELK + Unseen 2013 - work by Linn Pedersen and Marthe Elise Stramrud

MELK is proud to announce our participation as one of four project spaces at this years edition of Unseen in Amsterdam. Unseen photo fair is an international art fair focused on undiscovered photography talents and unseen work by established photographers. After a successful first edition, the second edition is scheduled from 26 to 29 September 2013, kicking off the fall season by celebrating yet undetected, cutting-edge work. We have selected works by Linn Pedersen and Marthe Elise Stramrud for the fair.

Linn Pedersen - Floor Arrangments - 71 x 56 cm - C-print ed of 5 - 2012
Linn Pedersen – Floor Arrangments – 71 x 56 cm – C-print ed of 5 – 2012

In Floor Arrangements Linn Pedersen combines black-and-white and colour photographs. By referring to the traditional sculpture and traces of certain materials, Floor Arrangementschallenges the materiality of photography and constitutes a coherence between sculptural materials and flat imagery. The title itself refers to Bruce Nauman’s work Flour Arrangements(1967), a photographic series where Nauman created different compositions using flour on his studio floor every day for a month, subsequently taking photos of the arrangements. The idea of the transformation between photography and sculpture is reflected and developed in Pedersen’s work.

Linn Pedersen (b. 1982 Sortland, Norway) lives and works in Berlin and Oslo. She received her MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Fine Arts in London 2009, and her BA in Fine Art at Royal College of Fine Arts in Bergen 2006. Her previous solo-shows include Floor Arrangements at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2012), Echo Chamber at Gallery Volt in Bergen (2012), The Trouble of Matter at MELK, Oslo (2011). She has been exhibited in cities like London, Kristiansand and Prague. In 2011 Pedersen co-curated the Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF) in Lofoten, Norway. She will be featured with a solo-show at MELK in November 2013.

In her work Marthe Elise Stramrud creates new situations amongst things that surround her. The images explore the harmony between objects that exist in our everyday lives. The relations caused by and within them turn our minds towards the gesture of seeing and thinking. Her compositions reveal each of the objects potential as study-object, architecture, landscape or fantasy, while at the same time maintaining a harmonic balance in relation to them. Her practice is comprised of an on-going series of images with various subject matters, all focusing on the co-relation between time, object and spectator.

Marthe Elise Stramrud (b. 1984 Kristiansand, Norway) lives and works in Bergen. She received her BFA from the Bergen Academy of Arts in 2011. She has exhibited her work in cities like Berlin, Malmö, Gothenburg, Guangzhou, Bergen and Oslo and is a member of Flaggfabrikken, centre for photography and contemporary art, in Bergen. Stramrud currently shows new work at Kristiansand Kunsthall and works towards a solo show and book with MELK in 2014.

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