Opening of Synapse Saturday 4th of March - New works by Gjertrud Hals
Welcome to the opening Saturday 4th of March at 1 pm!
Synapse is an exhibition presenting a project from 2021, Gyri Sulci, as well as brand new works on show for a very limited time, before they leave for other exhibitions in Europe.
A characteristic of Gjertrud Hals’ artistic practice, is experimentation and exploration of all possible materials and the willingness to combine history and the present, tradition and innovation.
In 2021 Gjertrud Hals was awarded production grant with funding from The Relief Fund for Visual Artists, and she used it to develop the floor installation Gyri Sulci. In the project the artist set out to develop a sculptural project by using, among other things, the metal rings from old soft drinks / beer cans.
“For decades I have used worthless objects in my work: box rings, wire stumps, roots and twigs. After a while, interest has turned more and more towards the organic, both in terms of theoretical content and experimentation with materials. In Gyri / Sulci, the challenge is to create a living organic expression with the help of inorganic materials. "
Gjertrud Hals also draws a lot of inspiration for her work from neuropsychological research, an interest in modern man’s place in nature, and how organic structures, with the brain at the center, make us creative and creative beings. Several of the artist’s central works are based on her interest in the brain as a subject. The title of this exhibition Synapse, comes from the Greek synapsis, ‘contact, connection’
In the process of making the works for this exhibition there has been an enormous activity in thousands of synapses in the artists studio.
A synapse is a transition between two nerve cells where a nerve signal can be transmitted from one nerve cell to another. A synapse consists of an axon end, a receptor cell and the space between them.
In Synapse, new works are shown together with the floor installation Gyri Sulci. Sculptural organic forms, made from threads that are intertwined and twisted so that they become larger connections and forms, with transitions connecting points and spaces. They are all made from recycled metal materials that the artist has received, found or bought at recycling sites. Much of the material is copper and other metal wire from Tofte recycling.
Gjertrud Hals is a Norwegian internationally known artist, born on Finnøy, now based in Molde. She has her education from, among others, the Academy of Fine Arts in Trondheim in the department of sculpture, and has since then had an extensive artistic activity in Norway and internationally, at exhibitions and in the form of large public art projects. From 1997 she has the State’s guaranteed income for artists, in 2020 she received Møre og Romsdal County Municipality’s work grant. Her work can be seen in collections such as: Mobilier National / Les Gobelins, Paris, Kube i Ålesund, Museum Bellerive, Zurich, Museum of Decorative Art, Lausanne, American Craft Museum, New York, Erie Art Museum, Pennsylvania, Leopold-Hoesch Museum, Düren, The National Museum in Oslo, The National Museum of Decorative Arts, Trondheim and Arts Council Norway collection.