Grass huts and mud fortresses

The exhibition Grass Huts and Mud Fortresses spans all the gallery spaces, including the basement and the garden of the Norwegian Sculptors Society. Mortensen treats the institutions building as a cohesive structure, playing with allegories and representations in a project driven by an experimental and intuitive approach to ideas, concepts, and materials.

In Utsikten, the top-floor room accessing the balcony, we encounter a series of line drawings. Each drawing suggests a fragmented human figure, reduced to strokes and marks that resemble body parts. These pieces originate from the artist’s curiosity about a specific genre of rude, often sexually suggestive comics popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Local versions included Pyton in Norway and Sweden, Myrkky in Finland, and perhaps the best-known, though less explicit, MAD magazine. Mortensen sees these comics as expressions of a impulse or desire bubbling up from a collective subconscious. Drawing has been a consistent element of Mortensen’s practice and plays an important role in his ceramic works, which are prominently featured in the exhibition.

In the main gallery spaces and the smoking room, we see a collection of ceramic sculptures, pewter wall pieces inspired by the form of grab bars, and monochrome silver paintings. These paintings, mounted as screens, have a dual quality — they are both reflective and absorptive. As is evident in the ceramic sculptures, Mortensen often revisits the idea of “loading” a work with multiplicity of potential functions. These pieces could serve as a container, birdhouse, incense holder, fountain, flowerpot, and garden fireplace all at once. Yet, these functions remain speculative, serving as possibilities rather than practical features. The oversized piece in the basement takes this concept further, aiming to “activate all the potential functions of the object simultaneously.” It is layered with various elements, objects, and functions, all pulling in the same direction. Mortensen likens encountering this work to trying to have a conversation with a highly extroverted person on a long-winded monologue. It’s not about a dialogue, but rather an exhaustive process of both filling up and draining out every ounce of potential in the piece. Bjørn Mortensen lives and works in Bergen. He was educated at Central Saint Martins in London and the Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Recent exhibitions include Feeding Fetish at Volt, Bergen, Det skeive blikket, KODE art museum, Bergen, Virksomheten, Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo, Trompe l’oeil at Gyldenpris Kunsthall, and the group show Seid at Knipsu, Bergen. Mortensen has also exhibited at Standard (Oslo), Kunsthall Oslo, Palass (KRS), KODE, Akershus Kunstsenter, Hordaland kunstsenter and The Norwegian Sculpture Biennale at The Vigeland Museum. In 2017, he was nominated for the Sparebankstiftelsen DNB Art Prize. His works are included in collections at, among other, the National Museum in Oslo and KODE in Bergen. Mortensen also runs the publishing house Apis Press with artist Mathijs van Geest. 
Norwegian Sculptors Society has been a national centre for sculpture since 1946, located in Villa Furulund near Carl Berner in Oslo. Surrounding the historic villa, the 4-acre sculpture park showcases curated exhibitions in dialogue with the indoor spaces. The Norwegian Sculptors Society aims to be a key contributor to the development of three-dimensional art in Norway. Since reopening in 2018 after extensive upgrades, the gallery has become a central venue for innovative three-dimensional art.