Public Artwork at Kolvikbakken Lower Secondary School, 2022
Wall painting and laser-cut MDF forms
In collaboration with Vigdis Fjellheim
Installed across two library walls, this mural functions as a scenic tableau composed of multiple visual layers. Foreground, background, and sightlines intersect to create a sense of spatial depth and narrative flow. The feature wall is dense and intricate, while the longer wall offers a lighter, airier expression. Together, they create an organic, enveloping visual environment where movement and stillness coexist.
At the center of the work is the iris flower, referencing the Art Nouveau artist Eugène Grasset. The Art Nouveau style, known in Norway as Jugendstil, serves both as aesthetic inspiration and thematic metaphor. The city of Ålesund, rebuilt after the 1904 fire in Jugendstil architecture, provides historical context—while the term Jugend (youth) resonates with the energy and spirit of a school environment.
The remaining forms are variations on the motif of books—floating, flying, and stacked—rendered in shades of blue and white. These silhouettes create an abstracted, landscape-like composition where thoughts and ideas drift freely, undefined yet charged with meaning. On these visual “vessels” sit familiar figures from literature and art history: Don Quixote, Nancy Drew, Tolkien’s mythical creatures, Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer, Askeladden from Soria Moria, and the comic heroine Modesty Blaise.
The visual language of these figures draws on Ukiyo-e, a Japanese art movement that also influenced Art Nouveau. The work’s title, Images from a Floating World, is a direct translation of Ukiyo-e—a poetic nod to the fluid and transformative nature of knowledge, imagination, and youth.