Underskog

THE SACRED FEAR Part 2
Thursday 20th January at 20:00

As a Part of the exhibition The Sacred Fear, curated by Mohamed Ali Fadlabi for Kunsthall Oslo, we have the pleasure of presenting to you Jon Benjamin Tallerås with the show Sky Blue Sky

Jon Benjamin Tallerås (b. Oslo 1984) is currently doing the last year of his bachelor degree at the art academy in Oslo.

THE SACRED FEAR 
I was so happy when Kunsthall Oslo asked me to curate a show. I couldn’t sleep that night. I wanted to do a good job so I googled the meaning of the word curator, and found this in wikipedia: 
“(from Latin cura, care), means manager, overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g. gallery, museum, library or archive) is a content specialist responsible for an institution’s collections. The object of a traditional curator’s concern necessarily involves tangible objects of some sort, whether it be inter alia artwork, collectibles, historic items or scientific collections. More recently, new kinds of curators are emerging: curators of digital data objects, and biocurators.” 
 

Amongst the many definitions, that which shocked me most was under education and training:  

“Curators generally hold a higher academic degree in their subject, typically a Doctor of Philosophy or a master’s degree in subjects such as history, history of art, archaeology, anthropology, or classics. Curators are also expected to have contributed to their academic field, for example, by delivering public talks, publishing articles or presenting at specialist academic conferences.It is important that curators have knowledge of the current collecting market for their area of expertise, and are aware of current ethical practices and laws that may impact their organisation’s collecting.” 
Holly mother of jesus!

Are they kidding me? do they expect me to know this stuff before the show? I never thought I was a curator. I am not even sure I am an artist yet. And here comes a real institution asking me to curate a show.

Well, for some reason I found my self doing it anyway. Probably because of my African upbringing. We were taught to listen and respect those who know better. 
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very personal show.
I have chosen locations I am familiar with in Oslo and invited friends to show their art.
I’d like to tell you stories about each space and each artist that I picked.



The Sacred Fear Part 2
Location: ONE NIGHT ONLY at UKS
Address: Lakkegata 55d
Opening: 20.01.11 – 20:00
Duration: One night only

ONO is a gallery my class mate, Eirik Senje and I started two years ago. Eirik had enough of managing the gallery with me.  In his stead, Tito Frey, Erlend Grytbakk Wold, and Jon Benjamin Lund Tallerås joined the team. When the academy moved to Seilduken join the rest of the faculties at KHIO, we lost our gallery space. Thanks to the UKS team, we got offered the opportunity to continue running ONO in their building. To quote the words of Gunter Reski, a great german painter and a good professor we once had at the academy, to describe ONO:

“Here the name is the program (…) Accelerated show settings are not only a question of efficiency or cultural structures in times of crashing markets, this time frame urges automatically the invited artists to show the essence of their body of work.”  
 

The artist:
JON BENJAMIN TALLERÅS 

Jon Benjamin is one of my partners at ONO Gallery. He is the one who makes us look better than we really are. Since he started working at ONO, he made our web page. He made all our posters. He stood there helping people to install their shows, made food for guests and in the face of all this, he never stopped making art.

What is fascinating about this young man is how calm and yet full of energy his work is. In many of his works, he “plays” with letters. Jon doesn’t think about letters the way I do. I saw him building 3D letters, designing his own, writing them with his left hand, spraying some and washing them away and taking photo of their traces. I saw him using marble dust to write a word on the floor (he called that one a sculpture).

I think he knows something I don’t know about letters. And I think that Jon is a researcher, a designer and a philosopher, maybe.. 


- Mohamed Ali Fadlabi

Do not miss the two other exhibitions this evening:
Lina Norell: Advokatfirmaet Kirkholm, Akersgata 43, 9.00–16.00
Petter Napstad: Semikolon, Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo. Fossveien 24, 17.00
Jon Benjamin Tallerås: One Night Only, UKS, Lakkegata 55 D, 20.00