GROUP EXHIBITION

This year’s main exhibition at Vestfossen Kunst-laboratorium, Girl Meets Girl, can be seen as a conversation between the unique voices of 25 significant artists, all gathered under the same roof. Its point of departure is the life’s work of the British artist Rose Wylie and the exhibition has indeed borrowed its title from one of her works: Girl Now meets Girl Then (2019). Here you will find a huge spectrum of expression—from Caroline Walker’s updating of classical painting, through Urara Tsuchiya’s sexually inflected ceramics and Ina Gerken’s fresh context for the language of abstract expressionism, to Lee Won-Kyoung’s animal-like creatures woven from metal wire—and that’s just to mention a British, Japanese, German, and Korean artist in an exhibition of many different nationalities. Together these voices talk about highly contemporary issues, and yet communicate across several generations, from 90’s-born Rosie Gibbens to nearly 90-year-old Rose Wylie. It is therefore only natural that Wylie is the point of departure for this exhibition. Her artistic career has spanned seven decades, developing in twists and turns all the way up to our own day—rather like her 15-metre-long painting of a snake you will encounter on the top floor.