Vital in understanding Navjord’s art are: The element of travel embedded in his physical being and inheritance, relating to movement and time, memory and immanence via; an omnipresent distant nature; living and working in Oslo versus his birthplace Melbu; a sense and flux of time concerning his experience, remembrance, and position of the past, present, and the future; and nature as a historical context in relation to the constituencies lack of one, proportionate to Rome or Greece.
Navjord’s unfashioned visual language differentiates between panopticon and the singular. Studying the artist’s body of work, one can detect a form of domicile-poetry and essayistic tone, where the imagery encompasses expanding tableaux’s to segments of civilization, nature, and individuals; insisting on being viewed as ideas and vehicles which generates thought. The artist forges several projects at the same time, compartmentalizing his larger scale, and lesser extended works ( [Melbu, 2OO5 -] // [Vessel, 2OO7] ); leaving an integral opening for discourse between ongoing, and forthcoming projects, regarding the autonomy, dialogue, function, stratagem, politics and presentation of, and across his production; in which a reductive form and palette, and analytical and distanced disposition; epic and documentarical; drains the imagery of immediate provocation; unifying scenes caught in the cyclic thrall of nature, history and relations: Unveiling essence and the deceleration of time and place- a return towards an origin. Navjord’s repertoire set a definitive atmosphere; evokes a presence, condition or process; where the recognition of individual identification and representation patterns, along with ideological structure; assist in the categorisation of what that is being presented; how this is perceived; and how these negotiations contribute to reveal a sense of position and outlook- versus the governing of an inmost proper future in the field of representation. This prospect opens for the interpretation and construal of the works as interplay between the artist’s and observers bury, in addition to confirming the images inner life.
The artist’s works contains a self-reflexive duality considering the status of observation. Subjects and objects in Navjord’s art observe and examine one another through reciprocated action internally. Prompting the viewer in silence, to often construct disquieting, unexpected, or revealing connections opposite the works distinctive dissonant character, montage, and correlation; questioning the artist’s themes and gestalt; in addition to how, what and who are being observed; forcing the spectator to build his own coherence of the context. In this mental hijack, art and spectator inherent a mutual influence. Where the role as witness and object are changeable, regarding of the observer’s self-consciousness and sense of- as well as, attendance in the surroundings.
Of late, Navjord has progressively moved onto a new dimension. Incorporating conceptual site interactions, digital generated imagery, object, text, and site-specific materials, into the agenda. Establishing subject and object- the individual and nature both as coexisting, incorporating and constructing entities: Subjects [Vessel, 2OO7 / Site Concept, 2OO7 - ]. //
Tor Navjord ( b. 1974, Melbu, Norway ) lives and works in Oslo. Navjord’s works have been exhibited in Scandinavia and Europe. He is currently working on eleven projects. The artist’s central themes are: Affiliation // culture // heritage // history // identity // identification // perception // representation // resonance // the spatial.
navjord.ta@gmail.com //
An ongoing photographic document of Melbu ( pop. 22OO ). The work will at its completion portray the towns total building mass, and consist of scenic and single sculptural images, interconnecting architecture; infrastructure; inhabitants; nature and history, towards cyclic processes concerning space and time. [ Melbu ] is due in 2OO8.
The excerpts presented in Bilboquet are preliminary sketches photographed between 2OO5 and 2OO7.
Barbary: Mapping a sense of time, place, and the human condition through the cruelty of imagery. //
Tor Navjord has since 2OO1 employed his homeregion Lofoten & Vesterålen- one of Norway, and north–Europe’s oldest geological sites, as an analytical and conceptual platform for his practice; regarding anthropological, psychological, sociological, and cultural issues; transcending expanse and infrastructure into a continuous vista of psyche and violence; concerning the fluctuating perspectives and relationships, as well as legacy, within and between the individual // society // nature. This is evident in his existing production of drawings, paintings and photographs. Piercing through this fabric of reality reverberates a conditioning aural component: Natures projecting presence in, and via the subject’s internal and external reality, prior to its birth. This devotional riffage impregnates his material- and formal production.
Navjord’s projects embody a whole. They do not constitute a narrative, nor serve as variations on a theme. His works, tropes and components of our Spectacle, are to be understood intermodally: As a combination of numerous coexisting dialects, systems, and approaches; that resonate; include, destruct, reflect, reproduce, and redistribute its surroundings- space and time. By applying diverse strategies and angles of incidences in the course of his practice, Navjord conjures a topographic scope of time, place, and the human condition within the region, employing; extensive research tours throughout the region’s spatial architectonics // cultural heritage // reciprocal relations and interactions // behaviour studies at individual and social levels // his domicile Melbu // Lofoten & Vesterålen’s landscape and commercialisation // the world’s cultural iconographic representations // dissociation // nihilism // intone black metal: Establishing a culturally and socially determined, ideological founded process, which reconstructs space and consciousness.
