Underskog

- Andrew Salgado (b. 1982, Regina, Canada) graduated in 2005 from the University of British Columbia. In 2009 he received his MFA from the Chelsea College of Art & Design in London, and he lives and works in Vancouver, Canada and London, England. His works have been shown in numerous international venues and his participation in Atopia’s Vitrine is his first solo exhibition in Norway.
Salgado’s works employ large-scale figurative oil paintings and videos that engage in an intense exploration of the body, identity, and sexuality.

- Paint Your Black Heart Red is a video performance acted on 4 public screens of Atopia. These four acts illustrate various attempts at physical transformations and shifts of identity that at times seem to be brutal. The videos explore the uncertain territories of becoming the other and they make visible the fragility of the body and its physical boundaries.

- Paint Your Black Heart Red is also the performative act of Atopia’s Vitrine to explore its own persona as a set of public art screens. With this exhibition Atopia introduces a radical shift from the conventional practices of public art. It questions the prevailing notions of public art where all has to be “pleasant to the eye and friendly to the environment”. Once again Atopia foregrounds the questions pertaining to concepts of the public, its construction and the limits of freedom bestowed on the arts in public space.
What are the definitions of public art? Do we draw or do we locate these borders and how far could we (or should we) push these boundaries?

-The exhibition is viewed from the street everyday from 15:00 until the next morning.