March and April of 2003

Two short courses since previous update

In the middle of March The Municipal Pensionfunds and Group 4 Falck held a course for us guys who take care of the buildings in Grimstad municipality. The main themes were property damages caused by water and burglary, fire prevention and securing values. A lot of relevant details for our daily maintenance chores and preventative measures.

As March turned into April Knutsen Cine-Technics in Drammen held a two days' course on cinematics. Combined with experience and basic theory the course is a good platform for a projectionists. The speakers presented up to date information and new solutions, attached great importance to preventive maintenance, and provided an atmosphere for communication between technicians and projectionists, the backbone of cinema projections.

Thirty-something projectionists from all over Norway attended, from Hammerfest up North, Fredrikstad down East and Stord in Western Norway. In the evening the market manager of Aass Brewery spoke about beer culture and brewing at The Gilde Hall. Complementary samples were followed by a nice dinner at the hotel and pleasant smalltalk into the early hours. Fewer attended the following morning, but again we were enlightened with qualified information.

A representative from Kinoton in Germany told about their machinery. A guy from XL-Audio spoke of loudspeakers and amplifiers, suprisingly without hard-selling their brands; That was a nice experience and we went into details on cables, positioning of speakers and resonance in theatres. The course ended with generous lunch at the newly built KinoCity, and a guided tour in brand new movie theatres and a large machine room, a demonstration of a system for programming and other solutions out of a projectionist's wettest dreams.

Soon summer and Short Film Festival!

Art

Lately I've been to too few galleries and exhibitions. But during a hasty visit to Stavanger I got to see Rogaland Art Museum for the first time. The museum owns more than 70 paintings by Lars Hertervig. Approximately 15 were displayed and I had seen only three of these live before.

Hertervig's works are in many ways typical for late 19. century painting, but often there is something strange and unreal in his colours and light in the motives; Especially the ones from the Tysvær fiord. A picture of sailing boats, Marine, had some light like I've only seen in Monet-paintings. (I don't think the works of Cézanne were known outside his inner circle at that time, but I thought I could see a similar disintegration of form and colours in Hertervig's works.)

The main exhibit was GRASS—Politics & Pop. All the originals of the GRASS-folder from 1971 were gathered, and some of the artists were represented with supplementary works. To see the former Reds being displayed in a central institution is a bit politically discomforting to me. it's easier though if I try to see their works as pure expression of the Zeitgeist and try to understand what influence they've had on later Norwegian painting.

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Some of the great painters who worked during the middle of the 20. century, the so-called between-the-wars-generation, were also collected at the museum. Reidar Aulie has become a personal favourite of mine, and the works of Thorbjørn Lie-Jørgensen and Erling Enger were also appealing—both new to me. Their expression and motives were a bit like the horse and farming paintins by Edvard Munch earlier in the century.

Antony Gormley's sculptures Broken Column are permanently on display in Stavanger. 23 identical and rusty red sculptures are scattered all over town. I even encountered one of the sculptures in the staircase of a culture centre.

In Christianssand's Art centre I saw some nice Svalbard paintings done by Lillen Dahll Vogt, after a stay of hers in the Artists' Hut in Ny-Ålesund in the eighties. She had caught the tender and vague colours of the Far North. Her expression wasn't simple to classify though, something in between impressionism and modernism? However, I started longing for the Arctic again...

The National Gallery displays "From thought to form" until 15. June; chosen ideas and (pre)studies to several central Norwegian works. Personally I drew great pleasure from seeing the sketches for "Play and Dance" by Halfdan Egedius, conceived while he stayed in Bø in Telemark in 1896.

Gormley...

Åge :: (translation:) 9. June 2003