What determines whether an idea, a feeling or an experience ends up as a text or a drawing?
63 national and international artists take part in the triennial, which focuses on two of the most important forms of human communication throughout history – drawing and text
"We have to continue with (writing down) notes and with sign(ing) to strengthen our relationship with the world!"
If you reset yourself, open your mouth and start talking without language, what will come out?
If you zero yourself out, empty yourself of practiced ways of drawing and start drawing, what will the result be? For the TegneTriennale, Terje Nicolaisen is trying to reset himself. Letting the drawing almost draw itself.
In Nicolaisen's art, it is the activity that matters. To think about art, and to create art. What the result is, whether it is a tangible object or a fluid idea, is secondary. Art is created in the activity of creating art. Nicolaisen's art is made in and by the body. The idea is filtered through the body, the fingers that meet the keyboard, the mouth that formulates words, the hand that moves the pencil. Left behind is evidence of an active action, an idea or feeling manifested as a reaction.
Curator Ottar Karslen in the catalogue
The drawing triennial 2023 has been given the title All that Lies Between and is a collaboration between actors in the field of drawing, text and art: Tegnerforbundet - center for drawing, the National Museum, Tenthaus (with its three locations) and Deichman Bjørvika. The exhibition opening is Thursday 12 October at the four viewing locations. 63 national and international artists take part in the triennial, which focuses on two of the most important forms of human communication throughout history – drawing and text.
The curatorial group for the Art Triennial 2023 is Ottar Karlsen, Roddy Bell and Hilde Lunde.
Visual identity: Ariane Spanier
In the work on the Drawing Triennial 2023, the curatorial group has asked itself several questions about drawing and text: Can drawing be understood as a language of its own? Is it something that can only be expressed through drawing or only through words? What happens in the brain when we see a drawing versus when we read a text? Is this experience unique to each individual, or are there patterns that bind us together? What can an abstract text look like, and if so, what meaning can it contain? What determines whether an idea, a feeling or an experience ends up as a text or a drawing? And what can the illustrations of a historical text tell us about how it is to live and make choices today?
This year's triennale has set itself the goal of examining the relationship between the written and the drawn, the said and the unsaid, and everything in between, which will be illuminated in different ways in several different and parallel projects. One of these is the Kviskreboka, an artist's book developed and published by Tegnerforbundet in connection with the triennial, where the original works that form the basis of the book are shown at Deichman Bjørvika.
The drawing triennial 2023 also contains a content-rich dissemination program which has been given the title Inbetween and which will create an activating framework around the triennial's theme. The program takes place at the four exhibition locations.
Tegnetriennalen is produced and owned by Tegnerforbundet, and this is the tenth edition of Tegnetriennalen (formerly Tegnebiennale).
