Christine Istad, Lisa Pacini, Hennie Ann Isdahl, Mona K. Lalim

The artists group OPEN SPACE works in the converging fields between abstract and concrete: things and places around us always have an interface with compositional, color-related, textural or conceptual issues. The general is related to the specific and vice versa. The four artists are working in different ways with a range of active relationships between detail and wholeness, function and surface — in this way history and place turn out to be both archive and opportunity. The group also comprises a stage for the exploration of the artists’ differing site-specific identities. Individual artists are not just from one place, but carry with them their own experience and origins as a room of their own. In this sense, the OPEN SPACE group also is a medium for the manifestation and exploration of the space between the artists as site-specific artists-subjects. In their new project the interplay of colors creates the platform for further reflection on site-specific identity. OPEN SPACE is a dynamic workspace between the four artists where the focus is the understanding of space as an ambivalent and mobile magnitude in a culturally specific context. The four artists are well established in the Norwegian contemporary art scene, acknowledged with numerous grants and commissions.

VIDEO: Christine Istad: “Colors” : 2011