Anna Daniell
Galleri Brandstrup is delighted to announce Anna Daniell’s upcoming solo exhibition titled “A Tribute to the Shelf.” The exhibition will open on Thursday, October 26th at 6 PM.
A TRIBUTE TO THE SHELF
On the shelf, there is a lamp made of a big shell. Next to it stands a small abstract sculpture, and after that, an empty bowl carved in wood.
Nothing else is on this shelf. And nobody is going to miss what is about to happen here.
The light goes out in the lamp made of a big shell, and the room gets a little bit darker, and this is how this day begins in this room, which will end with great disappointment.
He enters the room and walks to the shelf and stops in front of his things.
"I am sorry, one of you has to move because there is a newcomer coming in," he thinks and moves the small abstract sculpture into the wooden bowl. The three things become two, and there is a new vacant space on the shelf.
He has a life filled with stuff, and now, very soon, there is a new fantastic thing arriving. The small abstract sculpture knows that this will never work.
Text by Anna Daniell
For the exhibition at Galleri Brandstrup, Anna Daniell will showcase both new and older works in various materials, including concrete, wax, fresco, wood, soapstone, marble, and bronze.
In this exhibition, Daniell explores the relationship between life and art within the confines of the home's four walls, delving into the private space, encompassing both its positive and negative aspects.
While Daniell creates sculptures, the core of her artistry lies in the narrative she weaves around them. Her sculptures have found homes in people's living spaces, served as subjects for lectures, developed their own stories, made appearances in films, and even held whispered secrets. Daniell often orchestrates and stages interactions between the audience and the art, exemplified by her permanent installation at Oslo City Hall (2021), where she invited a representative from each district to share a secret with their respective district sculpture before its installation. Daniell draws inspiration from surrealist artists such as Agnes Pelton, Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, Helen Lundberg, Dorothea Tanning, and Gertrude Abercrombie, frequently incorporating references from these artists into her work.
Her portfolio includes both solo and group exhibitions, featuring the Lorck Schive Art Prize, Trondheim Art Museum, Henie Onstad Art Center, Kunsthall Trondheim, Podium, Cabaret der Künstler - Zunfthaus Voltaire, Manifesta 11 in Switzerland, Open Source Gallery in New York, USA, Stavanger Art Museum, Total Museum Contemporary Art in South Korea, Kunsthall Oslo, She Will, Plum Trim, Norwegian Sculpture Biennial (2017, 2013, 2011), Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Galleri Brandstrup, and Kunstnernes Hus. In 2017, she was granted a 2-year studio residency at Oslo City Hall, nominated for the Sandefjord Art Prize (2017), received a Civitella Ranieri fellowship in Italy (2018), and completed a 3-month residency at Chang Dong Studio/National Museum in South Korea (2011). Daniell has also curated exhibitions and invited fellow artists to collaborate in her artistic endeavors, as seen in the artwork "INTERVIEW WITH A DEPRESSED SCULPTURE," where Daniell invited author Vigdis Hjort to pen a fictional interview with one of her sculptures.
Daniell has executed several permanent installations, most recently at Oslo City Hall and Bretvedt Detention Center. Currently, she is working on an installation, a sculpture garden at the new clinic building at Radium Hospital in Oslo, and preparing for a solo exhibition at Oslo Kunstforening, Norway's oldest art institution. Notably, she was recently interviewed on the KORO (Public Art Norway) podcast, and her latest exhibition, "AKTIONISTS.KorO 2024," garnered significant attention.