ULTRA SUPER, Nils-Thomas Økland, 19.01-14.02.19
Nils-Thomas Økland (b.1981) lives and works in Sandnes, Norway. He works with an array of arts traditions and most often he utilises several of them simultaneously. Considering himself predominantly a sculptor, he always keeps a very sculptural and material sensitive approach to making his art whether he works with objects, drawing, print, photography, sound, or any other medium. Økland’s artworks frequently present the viewer with something, or at least part of something, that on one hand seems rather recognisable, while at the same time appear to be quite unfamiliar and peculiar given certain shifts, juxtapositions and material transformations.
For the exhibition in Studio K, Økland looks at detergents and cleaning utensils we recognise from our own routinely and ritualistic daily chores as a starting point. These everyday, almost forgotten, objects have gone through a transformation by being recast into plaster by broken and reassembled alginate moulds - A technique and a material choice which gives the objects a mineral and earthly form. These pure and white recognisable figures are then set up in relation to a number of flexible and soft draped plastic pouches holding liquid detergents the cast bottles may one time have contained.
Nils-Thomas Økland, BA Fine Art fra Falmouth College of Art, Falmouth, UK (2005). Selected Solo and duo Exhibitions; From From Here Here To To Eternity Eternity, Underground Gallery, Manila, PH (2017); Everything is in Readiness, Sandnes Art Society, Sandnes, NO (2015); Something. Anything. Everything, Studio 17, Stavanger, NO (2015); Confessions of a Volkswagen, Prosjektrom Normanns, Stavanger, NO (2012); Selected Group Exhibitions; The National Autumn Art Exhibition, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, NO (2015); 50x50x50, Sandnes Art Society, Sandnes, NO (2014), Vestlandsutstillingen 2010, Haugesund billedgalleri, Haugesund, NO (2010); TB Kingdom, Medium Gallery, Bratislava, SK (2009); Bridge, Baku Centre for Contemporary Art, Baku, AZJ (2008); Paperworks, Bury Art Gallery Museum + Archive, Bury, UK (2006)
