Hordaland Kunstsenter

Palinca is the name of the Rumanian and Hungarian fruit brandy which is so strong it is commonly referred to as "fence-ripper", while the pastoral often is connected to a nostalgic description of landscapes, a description of an exaggerated simple and seemingly honest lifestyle. This duo of words is as many others of Rudjord Unneland’s works: humorous.

The exhibition is one project divided into several pieces; paintings and sculptures in different materials. Rudjor Unneland is part of a young generation Norwegian artists preoccupied with how our society has shaped us and what effect our lives have on others. Two of the sculptures in this exhibition are produced in China, thus the method of production enters into the themes raised in the exhibition. In a global economy seemingly without borders there is of course still a harsh division between those who have and those who don’t have. Entering the exhibition space time can begin, and at the end of the journey in the basement of Hordaland Art Centre time starts again, helped by a clown in blinking neon. It is as if time is a circle in Rudjord Unneland’s works, and through the loop we can jump back and forth to scrutinize out times.

Ideologically Rudjord Unneland has several years been occupied with transgression and time. In a text from 2008 he paraphrases the theologian and researcher Paul Otto Brunstad: “There is something transgressional about our times. Not because borders have ceased to exist, but because existence has become so liquid that it is running over, under, through and past everything which used to be known as solid. Like a forgotten yeast leavened dough which rises quietly over the edge of its container without much fuss. Accompanying this softness of our times is a constant heating of the society by more and more sentimentality and aesthetics. Feelings are in focus. Facts, stringent logic and clear arguments do not have the power of intimacy. The soft, warm, malleable and flexible have set in. Everything is left to the individual’s continuous interpretation, where every interpretation is possible and plausible. “

Our obsession with repetition of already tested and tried concepts evolving during the twenty years which have passed since the first winner of Big Brother ran out from a surveilled house in the Netherlands is discussed in the exhibition Palinca Pastorale through works leading illogical reasoning.

The artist Thomas Hestvold has been commissioned to write a text for this exhibition: Doubt, lightness and multiplicity.

This is the first of a series of three solo exhibitions this spring at Hordaland Art Centre. We highlight three strong individual voices and investigate their views on our times.

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Sveinung Rudjord Unneland (1981) lives and works in Bergen, Norway. Through painting and sculpture he discusses the collision of the private and society at large. He has been visible both in Bergen and nationally by keeping a high level of activity. During 2006 and 2007 he was part of the artist group Members Club. They created a series of group exhibitions, as well as the one off event MC Messa (The MC Fair) which gathered all the artist run galleries in Norway for one night. In 2009 he curated the sculpture exhibition Re.* Doubting Telling Objects at Visningsrommet, Bergen, where he also showed the piece Love story; a yellow parasol perforated by fluorescent tubes. Other group exhibitions he has participated in the last year are The Last Resort, M4 residensy, Amsterdam; Sidehow, galleri Gathe, Bergen; Weird Science, Waterside projectspace, London. In 2008 he made the work Jaws, a two part concrete monolith on a marble foundation which stopped time, at the outdoor exhibition Tempo Skien. In a split second it seems the concrete has captured a bird, twigs and other unfortunate objects, thus freezing a particular time and place. He also participated in the group exhibition Inland Empire at Christiansands Kunstforening with the work Future and past combined. Autumn 2010 he has his second solo exhibition at LNM in Oslo.  Rudjord Unneland finished his MA at Bergen National Academy of the Arts in 2007.

The exhibition Palinca Pastorale by Sveinung Rudjord Unneland is curated by Anne Szefer Karlsen and produced by Hordaland Art Centre. Sveinung Rudjord Unneland has received support by City of Bergen, Vederlagsfondet and Statens utstillingsstipend. Hordaland Art Centre receives its core funding from Hordaland County.