Series

Ellen Karin Mæhlum: Planktonportretter, 2008-10.

Making the invisible visible

Ellen Karin Mæhlum’s Plancton Portraits are hanging on several floors at the Department of Biology. The beautiful prints are a magnified, aesthetical twist on images that many of the department’s researchers know from their microscopes.

Self Portrait Crossed Fingers

Dirt under the fingernails. Black, wrinkled old man's hair on the knuckles. Wrinkles and lines. When John Coplans photographed his own hands, he did not put his fingers in between. There is no attempt at beautification, no illusions. And in just that, there is a kind of poetry.

Kjartan Slettemark: Kjerringa med staven, 1996.

The Crone with the Cane

Spontaneous compositions by Kjartan Slettemark: The white canvases are partially covered by shapes in the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. Only in a few of the pictures, the paint has sometimes mixed and blended, so we see signs of green and orange.

© Else Christie Kielland: Helge Hundingsbane II, 1933.

The story in the picture

How to portray a story in a picture? Artists have found different solutions to this problem. The pictorial surface has its limitations. It is mostly perceived in one glance - it lacks the time perspective that we use when communicating by text or voice. A common strategy in the Middle Ages was to...

© Else Christie Kielland: Balders død, 1930-70.

Death of a Norse God

The gods’ favorite is killed. Balder, son of Odin, was so beloved for his beauty and goodness that his mother, Frigg, got every living and dead thing in the world to solemnly promise that he would not be harmed. She left out only one small, modest plant: the mistletoe. The cunning Loki was jealous...

Seventeen social scientists

Next to the Information in the SV building there are seventeen small prints on fabric, framed in glass. The motifs, famous thinkers, are pixellated, made up of circular dots that are denser in some areas. From a distance they look like black and white photos, but if we move closer, the images...

Peculiar hat people

Kjetil Finnes figures do not look like the average people you’ll meet on the street. Here are strange costumes and fools’ hats in a brown color palette. We can imagine that Finne has portrayed members of a traveling circus, of the kind that wear old-fashioned costumes without being from a particular...

Some snakes and a cranium

Ole Johan Tørud’s prints often touch on religious and mythological themes, and the three that hang in the HF Secretariat are no exception.

Non-geometric geometry

In the narrow corridor at the Faculty Administration at the SV hang eight small paintings. Gunnveig Nerol has used criss-crossing lines to create these pictures, which in spite of their abstract design provide a sense of space.

Portrait of a Department

A banana. A dolphin, in the same pose as the banana. The symbol for the Firefox browser. Frankenstein’s monster. Orderud farm. A reproduction of Etienne-Jules Marey’s graphical train timetable from 1885. These are some of the images and videos that decorate the Department of Information Science and...

At sea at night

A man pulls a large, black fish out of the water. A woman is standing naked in a boat and fishing, the hair stands straight out behind her and suggests that the boat is at high speed. In another boat, a person is reclining. These events are the main motifs in Trine Lindheim three prints, which hang...

© Tom Sandberg / BONO. Uten tittel 2004.

Three photographs

The monumental photographs by Tom Sandberg in the entrance area of the BB building refer to themes that the users of the building deal with on a daily basis.

Stars and wings

In a corridor at the Grieg Academy there hangs a series of shapes. They follow two "main templates”, they are wings or stars. The stars are shaped like a little child often draws them, with rough triangular points, but unevenly distributed, without the symmetry that older children learn is correct....

Pregnant with a twist

A pregnant woman is by definition beautiful. She has a glow about her, people like to say. Vibeke Tandberg's photo series Undo challenges this notion.

The Ten Commandments in hands

Handshakes. Pointing. Grabbing. Stretching. With photographs of hands in these postures, Eirik Holmøyvik has illustrated the Ten Commandments. Each photograph introduces one chapter of the essay collection Dekalogen (Decalogue), which deals with the Ten Commandments in 13 essays on legal and...

Merry, murky pictures

Oddvar Torsheim’s prints at the Faculty of Law are simple, and seemingly cheerful. A girl stands in front of a landscape of sea, houses, mountains, a dog. Three bats are flying toward us, in a picture called Tre engler (Three Angels). The dogs Fido and Trufast are running in front of red mountains...

© Per Kleiva / BONO. Mellom djevelen og det djupe svarte.

Per Kleiva. Serigraphy

The two prints at the Faculty of Law were both made relatively late, in 1986, and do not have the same political clarity as Kleiva's earlier work. The poetic titles Mellom djevelen og det djupe svarte (Between the devil and the deep blackness) and Skulle gjerne vite kva dei tenkjer og trur (I should...

© Harald Kryvi, Plansnitt av netthinne, laks (Salmo Salar)

Aesthetic anatomy

Harald Kryvi’s prints hang spread throughout the campus. Most of the faculties have at least one of his pictures, which show anatomical sections of animals or humans, imaginatively aestheticized.

Care, Forgiveness and Advertising

The four graphic prints are designed in a classic advertising style, and could have been linked to large corporations – the designs of original logos are still recognizable in their shapes.

Bjarne Lund: Kvinne i kystlandskap og Pike i utemiljø

In the waiting room of doctor Kullmann

Birger Kullmann was an ear, nose and throat specialist in Bergen. In 1928 he got a new waiting room, decorated by Bjarne Lund (1896 - 1931). Six of the paintings were later moved to Sandviken Hospital, where they are now hanging in the auditorium in Building 3. Four of the paintings are rectangular,...

Painting + relief = Impression

All the pictures show simple forms, sometimes one single line breaking the smooth surface. Other times something figurative is suggested: a comb, a jellyfish, two glasses, and maybe a ship? The series Inntrykk (Impressions) by Kjetil I. Berge literally consists of impressions in gypsum.