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Echoes

Knut Henrik Henriksen, Architectural Doubt, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway, Echoes, Bergen rådhus, Erling Viksjø

Invited to show works in public space in Bergen in 2012 during the restoration of Bergen Kunsthall, Henriksen decided to make a monument to Erling Viksjø, who designed the city hall that dominates the city’s skyline. But after months of planning an exhibition in the space underneath Viksjø’s building, he got a phone call explaining that the concrete facade was disintegrating and the area had been closed to the public. Seeing the potential in when things go wrong, Henriksen decided to make the most of the situation by postponing this project and moving on with another. Based on the damaged parts of the building, which he took as a sign of architectural frustration, he made a new formwork in wood for sections of the Bergen City Hall facade. Each of these sculptures corresponds to the height of one floor and harbours the potential to rebuild specific architectural elements from Viksjø’s building. 

These sculptures were then installed on the facade of Bergen Kunsthall, which is opposite Bergen City Hall. Titled ‘Echoes’, the exhibition thus played not only with the relationship between classical sculpture and architectural formwork, but also with the proximity of the buildings and the sculptural and architectural echo between them. Parts of this project and the ideas within it were continued in Henriksen’s exhibition in Bergen in 2014.

Knut Henrik Henriksen, Architectural Doubt, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway, Echoes, Bergen rådhus, Erling Viksjø
Knut Henrik Henriksen, Architectural Doubt, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway, Echoes, Bergen rådhus, Erling Viksjø
Knut Henrik Henriksen, Architectural Doubt, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway, Echoes, Bergen rådhus, Erling Viksjø
Knut Henrik Henriksen, Architectural Doubt, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway, Echoes, Bergen rådhus, Erling Viksjø
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