Norwegian artist A K Dolven's first solo show in China will be exhibited in the Space B of Platform China, opening at 15:00 p.m. on June 5, 2010. This exhibition is part of a continuing dialogue established at Platform China concerning the role of the moving image in contemporary art. Although A K Dolven’s practice includes film, video, photography, painting as well as site specific works, the show looking for balance presented for the first time in China concerns itself specifically with works made for moving images.

Curate by: David Thorp

Project supported by: OCA Office for Contemporary Art Norway; Innovation Norway, Nordland; Royal Norwegian Embassy in Beijing

As the emergence of contemporary art from China has shown vividly in recent years, contemporary art is no longer necessarily West-centric. The work of contemporary artists is exhibited throughout the world as part of a homogenised global totality that comprises the art of today. In this exhibition Dolven is showing four works executed over a period of eight years that represent separate but interrelated and fundamental aspects of her practice in film and video - a concern with the body as the vessel within which human sensibility and emotions are contained and alternatively as substance in a world of form and matter; the existential condition of the individual considered from an essentially humanist position, and the potential these philosophical positions have to be realised within an aesthetic canon.  Each either directly or implicitly makes reference to place and more particularly the landscape.

These works are rooted in Dolven's sensibility formed in the northern reaches of Europe, in the landscape that surrounds the Lofoten Islands. Here in the winter the mountains that run down to the sea are covered in deep snow, in the summer the sun never sets. This extreme environment is used as a backdrop by Dolven, a reality that contrasts favourably in its purity and simplicity to an urban setting, creating a generous stage for her reflections. Its harsh and simple scenography has become a place where Dolven's ideas can gestate as she reduces the human experience to fundamental conditions and broadens enduring conventions of visual art.