When being in nature, as I have been much more through this past year, you feel impossibly small and at the mercy of nature for your survival. A city, like Göteborg, feels at most, a few centuries old; in nature, you’re on geological time and your own life is just a speck. I have used the experiences of this isolation and turmoil spent alone as a platform for developing my project, based on the collected feelings and ideas sprung from a time in unknowing suspense, the distance from it, looking back at it, will give way for new ways to evolve.
Magnhild Opdøls’ works are often based on photographs and found objects. She examines how the feeling of reality is conveyed through other media such as film and literature, and processes the photographs according to basic compositional principles. The photographs are then often used to create pencil drawings, leaving only the main motif on a white or black surface. The pictorial approach is realistic, but the motif is presented without an eye for a realistic reproduction of the object. Primarily looking to evoke a feeling, the object-composition is a vehicle. In this exhibition she has also used the photograph as a medium in itself.
Through a profound interest in nature and its changes Opdøl explores how objects and images undergo a transition when they are re-contextualised, and how they obtain new qualities in the process. Nature has always been a main character in her work, its constant changes, more rapidly and challenging as of late, is part of her collection of material and works.
Magnhild Opdøl (1980) works in Norway. She has exhibited solo at among others Norsk Skogmuseum och Galleri Ö, NO (2021), RisørKunstpark (2018), Kunstmuseum Nord-Trondelag (2017). She’s also taken part in several art residencies, most recently at Konstepidemin i Göteborg (2018).
www.magnhildopdol.com