The Surnadal Billag residency offers two artists a ten-day stay. They work in spacious studios that enable them to create monumental works.
Māris Čačka – artist, curator and director of the world-renowned Rothko Museum in Daugavpils, Latvia – has developed a unique hybrid method of abstract expression that integrates painting and graphics. His works are multi-layered in technique and content, unfolding as imaginary dialogues between the artist and his contemporaries about the meaning of the world today. Čačka’s creative expression is free and intuitive, as he aims for emotional harmony in himself and the finished artwork. Thus, he is equally open to largely decorative construction and a profound symbolic message contained in such elements as colour, darkness and light, and their rhythmical structures emerging on the canvas plain. At Surnadal Billag, Čačka creates his third work on a brick wall. Taking full use of the excellent location that offers opportunities for large-scale expression, he conveys his sense of Norwegian nature. His residency output captures fragments of stunning Norwegian mountains and breath-taking waterfalls. Latvia is a flat country, without mountains, so he finds waterfalls both fascinating and intensely inspirational.
Beate Gjersvold is an artist and art historian based in Trondheim, where she has her studio at Rotvoll Kunstnerkollektiv. She works on parts of her current project on Nordmøre, has an address on Ertsvågsøya, Aure, and is a member of BKMR (Biletkunstnarane Møre og Romsdal). Her project is to immerse herself in the concept of TIME, which she conveys through paintings, installations, photography, video installations, and text. In Nordmøre, she carves out rocks, minerals and crystals, which become installations that are shown together with paintings. During her stay in Surnadal this time, she works with paintings using a special watercolour technique with real minerals.
Both artists draw inspiration from nature and their surroundings during their stay.
Here, the two artists have a dialogue with their art, where colours, lines and genuine emotions talk together.
SIVIA 