​Tori Wrånes to hold her first major solo exhibition in Norway at The National Museum.

Tori Wrånes to hold her first major solo exhibition in Norway

Welcome to the exhibition “Tori Wrånes. Hot Pocket”, which opens 21 April at the Museum of Contemporary Art,which is part of The National Museum. A press viewing will be held on Wednesday, 19 April, at 11:00 a.m. To register, please contact Media and Press Manager Elise Lund (elise.lund@nasjonalmuseet.no).

Showcasing both new works as well as career highlights that have not previously been seen in Norway, “Hot Pocket” is the first major Norwegian exhibition to present the art of Tori Wrånes (b. 1978). The exhibition will also feature the world premiere of her new performance “Sirkling”.

Among Norway’s most internationally acclaimed artists. Wrånes’s art has previously been shown in such venues as the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos, the Sculpture Center in New York, the Colombo Art Biennale in Sri Lanka, De Appel in Amsterdam, the Grand Palais in Paris, and the Carl Freedman Gallery in London. She has also been commissioned to create works for the Biennale of Sydney, Performa 13 in New York, CCA Lagos, the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy in Dhaka, and Lilith Performance Studio in Malmö.

A unique voice in contemporary art. Using costumes, props, vocal effects, and movement, Wrånes manages to shake things up and create suggestive and hypnotic pockets of time, secret rooms of energy, and trollish utopias. Her elaborate projects invite us to take part in a dreamy, magical world where everything seems possible, where traditions are twisted and turned every which way, whether for a concert on a ski-lift, a ballet with construction cranes, or a choir performance on bicycles.

A desire to let everyone be accepted for who they are. The troll is a recurring figure in Wrånes’s art – and as she herself sees it, all of us are trolls. By this she means that people are multifaceted, but that they have become used to presenting only their good sides, while their troll selves only come out at night. She believes it is high time we show our entire selves and stop being afraid that we, like the trolls of folklore, will crack open in the sunlight.

With “Hot Pocket” Wrånes has transformed the entire ground floor of the Museum of Contemporary Art. The walls and floors have all been covered with brown carpeting. Are we inside a cave, or inside the stomach of an animal turned inside out? Light pulsates up and down, as though the day has changed its normal rhythm. An invisible bird flutters through the galleries. The sound of a wind gust swooshes past, and visitors turn slowly around on a podium at the exhibition, as though they are out travelling. Have they been captured, or are they on a vacation in a dream?

World premiere of a performance with forty performers. The National Museum and the National Theatre have joined forces to present Tori Wrånes’s new performance “Sirkling” Featuring over forty performers, this is the most ambitious work Wrånes has ever shown in Norway.The entire exhibition can be experienced as a staged event spanning several rooms, and it is within this universe that “Sirkling” will be performed on 19­–21 May. The narrative focuses on a group of furry animals who wander around in circles while carrying rocks and singing.

The Museum of Contemporary Art’s swan song. “Hot Pocket” represents the Museum of Contemporary Art’s swan song, as this is our final exhibition at our current location in the historic Kvadraturen neighbourhood. In autumn 2017 the contemporary art exhibitions will be relocating to their temporary home at the National Gallery, before making the final move to the new National Museum building that is set to open in 2020.

“Hot Pocket” will run until 3 September 2017. For more information, please contact the exhibition’s curator, Stina Högkvist (stina.hoegkvist@nasjonalmuseet.no, tel. +47 450 34 635).