You just pick up right where you left off – Arild Horvei Instanes and Elisa Muliere – IN2 final exhibition – Bergen, Norway

“You just pick up right where you left off” is the exhibition by Bergen-based artist Arild Horvei Instanes and Italian artist Elisa Muliere resulting from almost two months of work in Adiacenze pop-up space in Bergen, which they have shared as their studio for IN2 project. Throughout this time, the artists have found out music to be their preferred mean to establish a connection, capable of transforming a simple space into an intimate experience of sharing. The title of the exhibition is indeed an excerpt from a song, “Other rooms” (Secret Code, 2021) by Pamela Z, contemporary American composer and performer. “You just pick up right where you left off, as you never stopped talking”, repeats the voice in the song: the process of the artists has evolved into a similar conversation, both with their own works and with each other. A daily exchange, a continuous flow that becomes now visibile on their canvases, in the space.

Elisa Muliere has created a cycle of works – some paintings and a fabric sculpture – which revolve around body communication, dance, movement. Instinctive gestures and fragments of figuration mix and merge, to tend towards non-static. Bergen, and the community that welcomed her here, surprised her with its warmth and dynamism: the works produced so far speak precisely of this momentum, of an openness as dense as it is unexpected.
Arild Horvei Instanes’s works are the results of his ongoing conversation with five canvases. He has talked to them all at one. He has listened to them, marked them, disturbed them. Every choice has changed the paintings and the artist himself. Preconceived notions of how they were going to look has slowly dissipated and new conversations have arisen. “Where are you going? Where are you going? Where are you going?”, Pamela Z music in the background seems to interrogate the paintings: all the paths are still open.

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IN2 is curated by Amerigo Mariotti and Giorgia Tronconi of Adiacenze and Manuel Portioli, with the support of Bergen Kommune, IN2 is much more than just an exhibition: the gallery has been open during the preparation of the show enabling the public to get a glance at backstage of the exhibition and to interact with the artists. At the same time, it has been an opportunity for the artists to meet people, hear their ideas and impressions throughout the entire exhibition process.