KODE Art Museums and Foreningen Trykkeriet marks the centenary of the Association of Norwegian Printmakers, with the exhibition «A Dream of Community».

Printmaking and graphic art has always been a vehicle for protest and political change. The exhibition presents graphic works from the museum collections by old masters like Rembrandt and Dürer and Norwegian artists like Per Kleiva and Inger Sitter. These are displayed alongside contemporary works from Trykkeriet’s own collection.

Three artists, Heli Rekula, Thomas Kilpper and Azar Alsharif, have been invited to present new works especially for the occasion.

With this presentation we wish to reaffirm the collective aspect of many forms of printmaking and to highlight important social and political currents associated with the medium.

Azar Alsharif Artist, living in Bergen (b. 1984).

Using the techniques of collage, printmaking and assemblage, Alsharif presents alternatives and new possible readings of the torrent of images that surrounds us, in works that hover between dream landscapes and hyperrealism.

Her manipulations often involve removing the text from advertising images so as to leave only the visual element, ambiguous and strange. What emerges is a deeper, more immediate symbolism. At the same time, she breaks down the structures of the representational industry, prompting questions about authenticity, value and subconscious.

Heli Rekula Artist and former professor at KMD, UiB, living in Helsinki (b. 1963).

In recent years, Rekula has turned to photography, embracing its materiality and its distributive and reproductive potential. In 2014, her book In Hemingway’s Garden won the Literature Prize of the Finnish Art Society, which described the work as “chamber music of fine-art literature”.

Her contribution to the exhibition is based on a series of photos taken during a trip to Mexico more than thirty years ago. Her poetic investigations of these photographic moments from the past are given material form as graphic prints.

Thomas Kilpper Artist and professor at KMD, UiB, living in Bergen and Berlin (b. 1956).

In a number of projects, Kilpper has transformed large expanses of floor in public buildings into print matrices. The images are often linked to the political history of the place, and the prints that are pulled, often in the form of banners, have been displayed both within and on the outsides of the buildings. One example is The Ring, created in London in 2000.

At KODE, Kilpper presents the wall installation What We Can Learn From You, What You Can Learn From Us, a work that highlights the dynamic between politics and education.