ANN CATHRIN NOVEMBER HØIBO & ANNA ZACHAROFF: "Two Sides, Please!"

STANDARD (OSLO)

PRESS RELEASE

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ANN CATHRIN NOVEMBER HØIBO AND ANNA ZACHAROFF

"TWO SIDES, PLEASE!"

18.11.2022-14.01.2023 / Preview: 18.11.2022 / 19.00-21.00

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If you have said A, you might as well say A again. A as in Anna. A as in Ann Cathrin. A as in "Att angöra en brygga". The Swedish film - "Docking the Boat" that is, for those that are in need of an English translation of the title - starts with a simple message: "Help!". This message in a bottle has drifted across the archipelago before finally finding its way to the harbour of Stockholm and finding somebody that understands: that the protagonists of the film we are about to watch are in dire need of help!

If you have said A, you might be tempted to say B to make a sense of progress. 1 hours and 41 futile minutes spent on trying to do exactly what the title suggests: "Docking the boat". The crayfish are ready on the island. The bottles of schnapps are on the boat. The strategies to get ashore are many, but none of them are successful. "Att angöra en brygga" is a story of how two halves capable of making up a complete perfection being kept in a permanent state of incompletion and imperfection. A crayfish party is not that much of a party without schnapps. And a party with neither crayfish nor friends might have you downing the schnapps all by yourself, scribbling the words "Help!", before slipping the note into the bottle, corking it and tossing it into the ocean.

If you have said A and B, you might as well say ABBA. The message in a bottle that keeps on reappearing in Anna´s paintings is possibly doing the same: searching for the other half to make it whole. The blond soprano that is contrasting and complimenting the dark mezzo-soprano. The paintings render the bottles bobbing up and down. Maybe it is the buoyancy of hope. Maybe it is the very energy and urgency with which these bottles were thrown into the blue ocean. The same blue as the silkscreen prints by Ann Cathrin. They run like ropes from top to bottom, like a prison break. Thus one half of the exhibition is being pulled by gravity and the other half is floating at sea.

If you have said A and B, you might as well say ACAB. All Captains Are Bewildered. Where is the wind coming from? What are all these ropes on the sailboat actually for? Why are we doing this exhibition (or why this dirty pink colour on the wall)? Some things we know and other things we don't know. The two artists have known each other since strolling the corridors of Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. What such an exhibition could be was not sure, is not sure and will remain unsure until we get sorted out what is really related and what is wholly unrelated. Then again, the strength of a rope is not dependent on each fibre running the entire length of the rope, but rather that there are enough fibres that are overlapping in any given place. Toss the rope to the friend that is standing on the dock, and slowly pull the boat ashore.

Ann Cathrin November Høibo (b. 1979, lives and works in Kristiansand). She received her education at The Art Academy in Oslo and Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. She currently is doing an artist residency at Cité in Paris and preparing for an upcoming solo exhibition at Kristiansand Kunsthall. Other recent solo exhibitions include Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand; Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo; Carl Freedman Gallery, London; and Drei, Colgone. She is currently also part of the exhibition, "Down North North Atlantic Triennial", which initially took place at Portland Museum of Art, Maine, USA, before touring to Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland, and Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden..

Anna Zacharoff (b. 1987, lives and works in Brussels and Stockholm). She studied at Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main Recent solo exhibitions include "Entrée" at S.M.A.K. Ghent, Belgium; Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; "The Devil*s Chemise", Kantine, Brussels, Belgium; and "Regular Co." in Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, Germany. On January 14, STANDARD (BOOKS) will launch the first monograph dedicated to the works of Anna Zacharoff. An artist talk will take place and two new aquatint prints by Zacharoff will also be available as of this date.

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Installation photography: Vegard Kleven