HD Video 4:28 min. Installation, 2 x 3 x 2,5 m. Hand dyed fabric, flatscreen TV.
Courtesy the artist & Kazachenko’s apartment. roderickhietbrink.com
A red sand-colored fabric is draped along the walls, ceiling and floor, creating a rectangular tent-like space. A flat-screen TV is angled vertically on the floor. The artist can be seen on the screen lying down on the floor of the same space, his face painted gold, wearing a mantle made of the same fabric. During the 4,5 minute long video he tries to convince the audience that the space they’re looking at, the space the artist is in, is good. It’s good because he wants it like this, because he likes it like this.
“With this work I have made an attempt to reveal some of the inner workings of art making and—in a broader sense—of voicing one’s opinions and feelings in a time when questions concerning the politics of our (cultural / religious / natural) environment seem to become increasingly polarised.”
– Roderick Hietbrink, Kunstenaar / Artist (Kunstfort in 2018)
Roderick Hietbrink (born 15 June 1975) is a visual artist, living and working in Oslo, Norway. His practice encompasses video art, installation art, performance art, sculpture and photography. By exploring different aspects of the psychology and inherent conflicts between our rational and instinctive self, his work touches on subjects of hypocrisy, nature’s agency, and humor. Hietbrink studied visual arts at the Academy of Art and Design St. Joost in Breda (1995-1999), the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2001-2002) and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam (2011-2012).
Recent solo exhibitions include Rodebrink Hietrick at RAKE visningsrom, Trondheim (2019); Soil, My Innards at Kunsthall Oslo (2017) and Roaming Organs at PAKT Amsterdam (2015). In 2018 he was part of the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo – Affective Affinities curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, and he has taken part in group exhibitions at Into Nature, Drenthe NL (2018); Oslo Kunstforening NO (2017); and Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF), Svolvær NO (2015).