FURNITURE ISN’T JUST FURNITURE

C: With a little imagination and some smart solutions you can make much out of just a little.
P: These texts have gotten so bad lately. Nothing but clichés.
C: Terrible. Just terrible.
P: We must keep believing that what we do is important.
C: If it just makes a few people think again. See the world in a new way.
P: When you have people over for dinner, add to the fun by cooking together.

Fotogalleriet is pleased to announce its forthcoming exhibition with Norwegian artist Ane Hjort Guttu. The exhibition contains three new works, among them the video work Furniture Isn´t Just Furniture commissioned by Fotogalleriet. Here we encounter a woman and a man who have settled inside the display exhibitions of an IKEA warehouse, where they alternately read aloud from the marketing catalogue and discuss their relationship in a language consisting mainly of hackneyed phrases.

Furniture Isn´t Just Furniture draws on theatre of the absurd as well as as claustrophobic marital TV-dramas. Hope might be found only in the exhibition´s black painted environment and theatrical setup, which suggests a certain “freedom of the stage”: the theatre as a space where our troubles can be handled and thereby transformed.

Two other works are also on view; a new photographic series in black and white, and a powerpoint presentation.

Ane Hjort Guttu (b. 1971) is a Norwegian artist and filmmaker based in Oslo. She works in a variety of media, but has in recent years mainly concentrated on film and video works, ranging from investigative documentary to poetic fiction. Among recurrent themes in her work are the relationship between freedom and power, economy and the public space, social change and limits of action. Between 2011 and 2016 she directed various portrait films where a central conflict reappears: an individual dissident struggling to handle oppressive social structures. Guttu is also an active writer and curator, and she is a professor at the National Academy of the Arts, Oslo.

Furniture isn’t just furniture was produced with the support of Fotogalleriet, The Norwegian Arts Council, Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond and Norwegian Photographic Fund.