ISCA GALLERY

MIA VAN VEEN
Silver Lines
13.10 - 12.11.22

We are pleased to present Silver Lines, artist Mia Van Veen’s second solo exhibition at ISCA Gallery. This exhibition debuts a new series of two dimensional works, which operate as cultural hybrids between sculpture and painting. These works reference the tradition of Norwegian rosemaling, a style of decorative painting which emerged in the eighteenth century parallel to other ornamental movements such as Rococo in France. At the time, advancements in heating technology, that replaced sooty fireplaces with contained pipes, allowed for the blossoming of elaborate and colourful decorative painting on walls and domestic objects. For generations, including Van Veen’s grandparents, the floral motifs overlaid interiors and everyday items. 

Approaching this craft from a contemporary perspective, Van Veen experiments with material approaches to ornament: brushes and oil on wood are exchanged for melted tin on copper and steel. Treating metal like paint, Van Veen explores different welding techniques to mimic the pressure of a paintbrush in gestures of undulating thickness. Unlike the perfectly clean lines of rosemaling brushwork, her metal renditions are surprisingly human: they reveal palpable evidence of the artist’s hand commanding welding machines to do more than solder or join allowing the imperfections and inconsistencies to become a kind of performative adornment.

Accompanying the wall works is a freestanding sculpture titled Ekstra vekt på loddet (Extra weight on the solder). Composed of aluminum and zinc with brass accents, a pendulum co-opted from an old clock keeps track of undisclosed measures of time.  Referencing the form of a tricep - the largest muscle in the human arm - viewers are returned to the hands and the arms of the artist: both Van Veen’s and the generations of rosemalere before her.

Yasmin Nurming-Por is a curator and writer based in Toronto, Canada

Mia Van Veen (b.1986, Oslo, Norway) holds an MFA from Iceland Academy of the Arts and a BFA from Emily Carr University in Vancouver. Recent exhibitions include Lounge for new people, Hulias, Oslo, 2022; Foodbank fundraiser, Trapp Projects, Vancouver, 2022; Tombac, Sagene Kunstsmie, Oslo, 2022; External rotation, ISCA Gallery, Oslo, 2022; Obsolete solar system, Galleri Memphis, Oslo, 2021; Fasciae, Jane/KOSA, Oslo, 2020, A fruitbowl three ways, Yac Tac, Vancouver, 2020; Beyond human impulses, Mengi, Reykjavik, 2019; The world belongs to everyone, not just a few, Nylo, Reykjavik, 2017. In 2018 she was an artist-in residence at the Banff Centre, Alberta with a grant from the Canadian Arts Council. Recent publications include article in Canadian Art Magazine with a text by Yasmin Nurming-Por, and 2021 book Fasciae by Jane/ KOSA. One of her performances with Artist Gudrún Tara Sveinsdóttir was included in Gallery Mengis book Beyond human impulses, 2019. Van Veen currently lives and works in Oslo.