Making "Fight or Flight" (2007)
Made in collaboration with Espen Henningsen this was one of our first really big commission works. Placed in the auditorium of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Oslo it features a monumental work on both sides, each measuring 600×1800 cm.
It consists of two wall-paintings combined with MDF reliefs mounted on top of them. The blue wall features an aircraft making a maneuver depicted in a sort of cartoon style by dividing the movement up in six airplanes on different parts of the path. The other wall features four cartoon characters, two women and two men, in some sort of flying chase.
This was the biggest project we had done by far, and we wanted very much to make something unique and monumental. So we took all the available space we had, both sidewalls of the auditorium. Each measuring 600×1800 cm it was a huge canvas for us to play with. The room being as big as it was, we felt it could withstand the boldness and size of our expression.
We decided to give each wall something unique that would be a piece in itself, but that would also “speak” with the opposite wall. What we came up with was to make man made flying objects on one wall, airplanes, and man made ideas of flying, that being flying superheroes on the other. The gigantic feeling of the room and what the room stands for was the right arena for something flying.
An auditorium is the arena where someone who has information communicates this to the audience and where great ideas can come from. The human aspiration to fly has been something we have been working on for a very long time. And in one aspect, we’ve made it, with the invention of the wing and the aircraft. But we have yet to fly by our own power, we let our superheroes do that.
For this project all the MDF figures where made in advance in my studio. Then we painted the two wall paintings over a period of about 9 days and then mounted the figurines on top of that.
