Tori Wrånes: Moon Bag / Rindon Johnson: Find Spot

Tori Wrånes: Moon Bag
Bergen Kunsthall is proud to present Tori Wrånes as the Festival Artist 2025. Since 1953, the Festival Exhibition has been one of Norway’s leading solo presentations.

The exhibition transforms the main galleries into a vast installation—a living stage and an endless concert. The title Moon Bag refers both to an everyday object and a symbolic notion: something carried with the hope that it holds value. But hope never exists in a vacuum—the word itself evokes the shadow of its opposite.

A carpet, reminiscent of a lunar landscape or an undulating wave, meanders through the halls, connecting the rooms. Sound breathes through the spaces like an invisible presence that pulls and releases. Monumental sculptural forms raise questions of direction and control. Is this movement or stagnation? Who—or what—steers the course? A mouse darts by, invisible one moment, unavoidable the next. A fleeting presence, a rhythmic, everyday repetition.

Wrånes’ works revolve around power dynamics, rhythm, and relationships. In Moon Bag, these themes unfold through contrasts in scale and perspective, where small openings lead to unexpected spaces and monumental forms create shifting viewpoints. At its core is a hopeful pulse—not a static condition, but a balancing act between light and darkness, moon and sun. Joy and community emerge as forms of resilience, insisting on existence even when circumstances resist. It is a reminder that the body can be both a tool for survival and an expression of freedom. Moon Bag lays structures bare, defies binary contrasts, and embraces the unpredictable.

Curated by Silja Leifsdottir.

Tori Wrånes (b. 1978) lives and works in Oslo. Her works have been shown at venues including Accelerator, Stockholm; Performa 13, New York; Lilith Performance Studio, Malmö; the Biennale of Sydney; Thailand Biennale; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Wrånes will represent the Nordic Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026, alongside Klara Kristalova and Benjamin Orlow.

Also opening
Rindon Johnson: Find Spot
Bergen Kunsthall is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Rindon Johnson, running concurrently with the Festival Exhibition 2025. For this exhibition, Johnson presents a series of works that extend his ongoing investigations into autonomy, surveillance, and material histories. The title, drawn from archaeology, reflects how meaning is shaped by context and discovery.

A live-streamed projection of Lille Lungegårdsvannet—the lake just outside Bergen Kunsthall—forms a central part of the exhibition, cast onto a slightly modified gallery wall. This continuous visual feed captures the passage of time and shifting environmental conditions, positioning the lake as both subject and reflective surface: an image continuously generated, yet never fixed. A deliberate sculptural intervention keeps the gallery window open throughout the exhibition. Air currents, shifting light, and the sounds of the city become active components of the installation, further complicating the boundaries of where the artwork begins and ends.

Johnson also presents a new series of ceramic tiles, pit-fired using cow dung as the primary fuel—a material choice that reflects his interest in transforming discarded elements into something of value. The tiles, treated with pigments including indigo and titanium white—the latter sourced from Norway and known as the brightest white—serve as material records of transformation. The exhibition also features a mahogany clock marking an alternative temporality—one tied to histories of colonialism and trade. A collection of fossilized whale ear bones introduces yet another temporal and spatial register. Used by whales for navigation, they hint at alternative ways of sensing vastness and deep time. A poetic text by Johnson adds a further layer of reflection.

Curated by Silja Leifsdottir.

Rindon Johnson (b. 1990) is an artist and poet working between New York and Berlin. He has presented solo exhibitions at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; CC Strombeek, Brussels; Chisenhale Gallery, London; the Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf; SculptureCenter, Long Island City; among others.