Framing Local Colors
Framing Local Colors is a site-specific installation developed for the Salangen Biennale in 2023 at Salangsverket, focusing on reuse, local material circulation, and color as a situational resource.Salangen Biennale, Salangsverket 2023, Norway, curator IPHIAN
Found wood, reclaimed paint, painted panels, broken window frame.
Framing Local Colors was developed at Salangsverket as a site-specific investigation into material presence, reuse, and color as a locally embedded resource. The work took its point of departure in an already painted standing panel on site, which became both a reference and a structural anchor for the installation.
Using found wood collected in the surrounding area, I constructed new elements that were painted with leftover and discarded paint gathered locally at Salangsverket. Color was thus treated not as an imported artistic medium, but as a material already circulating within the site — carrying traces of previous use, labor, and function. Alongside these elements, a sculptural structure composed of broken white window frames was assembled, framing fragments of space, light, and color rather than enclosing them.
The project was realized as part of the Salangen Biennale, curated by If Paradise Is Half As Nice (IPIHAN). A central aim of the participation was to work site-specifically at Salangsverket — a place marked by industrial history and surrounded by a distinctive and exposed landscape — and to allow the conditions of the site to determine both form and method.
Working under the principle of leave no traces, the project required approaches that could engage directly with buildings, materials, and the surrounding landscape without leaving permanent physical impact. This constraint became a generative condition, shaping both material choices and spatial decisions.
The social dimension of the biennale was integral to the process. Living and working closely with other participating artists, the work unfolded through shared discussions, exchanges, and practical compromises. The period culminated in an extended exhibition presented across multiple locations at Salangsverket, including the power station by the sea, the ruin park with its former processing facilities, Vinkeln along the road toward the mountain, and the summit of Storhaugen, where the mine was once located.
Within this context, I presented Pink Kraftstation, Midnight Painting, Framing Local Colors, Framing Material Process, and Fishing with Local Colors. Across these works, color functioned as a temporal and situational material — activated through place, use, and disappearance rather than permanence..