Short Circuit

Mimosa Echard, Lina Viste Grønli, Judith Hopf, Ann Cathrin November Høibo, Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Albert Mertz and Chiemi Shimada.

Press release and documentation

FEVER!

In the mid-00s, actor Nicolas Cage starred in a series of Japanese TV commercials for the pachinko manufacturer Sankyo. He plays the piano, rides with cowboys, dances with aliens, screams “FEVER!” In one of them, a pearl earring rolls off a woman’s ear, down her body, hits the floor and suddenly the entire surface is covered in what seem to be small metal balls. Cage appears, shouting: “I love pachinko!” All of the commercials are fragmented, absurd, quick montages that don’t necessarily communicate anything specific. In a way, they operate on the same principle as the machine they’re selling: keep the current flowing.

In his short essay on pachinko in Empire of Signs, Roland Barthes describes the parlour not as a space of leisure but of “a deliberate, absorbing labor; never an idle or casual or playful attitude.” Players stand in rows, each sealed in their own loop, feeding metal balls into machines with an abrupt, uninterrupted gesture. Everything is decided in a single movement. What Barthes calls a “nutritive circuit”: money converted into balls, balls into flow, flow into modest, absurd rewards – a candy bar, an orange, a pack of cigarettes. The point is not what is won but that the circulation continues. Pachinko, in this reading, is less a game than a model – for how capital moves, how attention is held, how desire is kept in place by the system that produces it. [1]

Short Circuit takes this logic as its starting point. A short circuit occurs when excessive current bypasses its intended path, when the system overloads on its own energy. The exhibition is structured accordingly: the exhibition space is designed as a closed circuit, a pinball architecture through which the viewer moves without exit, entering the circuit.

—Abirami Logendran

[1]Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 27–29.

The exhibition is curated by Abirami Logendran in collaboration with Pachinko

Redd Oktober

Kjersti G. Andvig & Lars Laumann

18 April – 16 May 2026 

Press release and documentation

Redd Oktober is centred around a new film developed by the artists through a long-standing, mostly friendly, discussion around class and access to information.

Redd Oktober builds on a former Oktober book outlet found in Andvig’s family basement in Northern Norway, part of a network of underground, politically affiliated bookshops active in the 1970s and 80s. It is set against the artists’ respective family histories with books and bookselling, and the opposing class trajectories they have produced.

Alongside the film, a wide selection of books, posters and LPs from the disused Oktober book store in Svolvær has been brought to Oslo.

A gamebook about class, geography and social mobility will be published late this year.

–

Lars Laumann lives and works in Brønnøysund, Norway. He studied at the Norwegian State Academy in Oslo and the North Norwegian Art and Film School in Kabelvåg. His work is held in collections including Tate Modern, London; the National Museum, Oslo; KORO – Public Art Norway; and MOCAK, Kraków. He has presented solo exhibitions at institutions such as Kunsthalle Winterthur, Maureen Paley (London), Foxy Production (New York), Bunkier Sztuki (Kraków) and Kunsthall Oslo, and has participated in major group exhibitions including the 5th Berlin Biennial and the Liverpool Biennial.

Kjersti G. Andvig studied at the National Academy of Fine Art in Oslo, Northbrook College in Worthing, and the North Norwegian Art and Film School in Kabelvåg. Her work has been shown in solo and duo exhibitions at venues including Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Rogaland Kunstsenter (Stavanger), Grand Union (Birmingham) and Etablissement d’en face (Brussels). She has participated in group exhibitions such as Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF), EVA International, Carnegie Art Award exhibitions, and shows at institutions including Astrup Fearnley Museet and the National Museum, Oslo.

Exhibition

Diversione

Theodor Nymark

6 March–4 April 2026

More info and documentation

“Of the vivid natural environment, today only a distant, fleeting memory remains — a melancholic semblance glimpsed within symbolic frames, like paintings or phone screens, or in physical ones, strolling through the domesticated nature of elegant city gardens, private or aristocratic.”¹

Diversione takes its point of departure in a residency at the Danish Institute in Rome. Emerging from research into landscape painting, urban theory and the historical layering of cultivated space, the exhibition considers diversion as detour and displacement, between image and site, memory and intervention.

The exhibition is accompanied by texts by Nikolaj Schultz, Assistant Professor of Social Theory and Ecological Thought at Aarhus School of Architecture, and writer Matteo Giovanelli.

Theodor Nymark is an artist and curator. In his practice, he systematically examines the metaphorical and physical conceptions of the environment, engaging with it by exploring the role of spirituality in a post-industrial world. Through a narrative and research-based approach, Nymark addresses the landscape by investigating themes such as art history, national identity, land politics, collective memory, and local architecture, while exploring their interconnections and impact on ecological thinking and governance.

¹ Excerpt from Matteo Giovanelli’s text for the exhibition.

Exhibition

Zida Bruun

Everybody should have

at least one eye closed

5–14 February 2026

More info

Most blinds can be customized to suit most homes and window types. They take up very little space and can be operated in multiple ways, making them a practical and versatile solution to personalize your needs and visions. By choosing between different types of blinds; a light-filtering model, one with partial view, or the blackout version, you can control both visibility and the amount of light let in.

Zida Bruun (b. 1994, DK) works with sculpture and installation, primarily using pre-owned objects and discarded materials to explore how functional value and collective habit intertwine.
Bruun completed her Master’s degree in Fine Art at the Art Academy in Oslo in spring 2026.

This exhibition was part of the Master of Fine Art graduation programme at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO).

Premiere

FRED

Natalie Price Hafslund

16 January 2026, Pigalle, Grønlandsleiret 15, 0190 Oslo, Norway
Doors 19:30, performance 20:00–20:30 - Free entrance

  • “Fred is a toad who lived in my garden when I was young, Fred scared the sh*t out of me, he had X’s for eyes. At the time, I imagined (feels like rumour now) that my older brothers had cut them out.

    Lone playtime in the garden often ended with being fully submerged in the lukewarm, sludgy shallow pond, like a two legged salamander… one thing would lead to another…

    One day, whilst working on cartwheels by the pond, I saw a delicious tennis ball glowing through the algae. Yes!, I thought, I’m going to repeatedly ram that ball so hard against the house. As my hand cupped the glowing mass, I realised it was no Slazenger, it was a swollen, yellow, putrid toad. A michelin inflated neon carcass drifting like a silky damsel in a high end pop video.

    Coincidences and evil brothers

    A few days after, as I left my bedroom, there was Fred. Fred had no eyes but had made it into the house, up the stairs to near my bedroom. It was here my relationship to toads took a turn for the worse, though I remained slightly enthralled. In the years after these events I began pickling my brain with blue drinks, so who knows if there were any toads at all.

    I've won two prizes in my life that I can remember, the first was for hula hooping - which took me as a total surprise as I stared unbelievably at my mid-section going for gold for an unnatural amount of time. The second was at an Easter fair for eating the most Jacob’s Cream Crackers in under a minute, my mother evil eyeing me from the sidelines, hoping this wasn't my destiny. I won because I had worked out how to move the crackers around my mouth at the same rate as eating them, like a sexy cement mixer.

    Anyway, let's see what I can do this time!”

    Music by William Doyle 
    Algae costume by Charlotte Ledger
    Light design by Benjamin Fjellman
    Sound engineering by Atilio Baez

    Natalie Price Hafslund (b. 1987 Devon UK) is a British-Norwegian visual artist working with text, sculpture and performance. She studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London and Hypnosis at the UK college of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Price Hafslund often works with found objects: material, emotional and social which she reconfigures, interested in the threshold between our inside and outside worlds and that in which we might share with each other.

    Supported by Kulturdirektoratet, Fond for Lyd og Bilde and Norske Billedkunstnere

Exhibition

Selina Trepp

Reality’s Truth

5 December 2025—16 January 2026

More info

Selina Trepp (Swiss/American) is an artist researching economy and improvisation.

Trepp works across media and space combining performance, installation, painting and sculpture to create intricate setups that result in photos, drawings and animations.

In addition to the studio-based work, Selina is active in the experimental music scene. In this context she sings and plays the videolah, her midi controlled video synthesizer, creating projected animations in real-time as visual music. She performs with a varying cast of collaborators and as one half of Spectralina.

During the opening, artist and musician Jenny Berger Myhre performed a 40-minute improvised concert, responding to the video work

Exhibition

Hannah Heilmann

HORSESHOE SHAPED

POINT OF NO RETURN

20 September—21 October 2025

> Info and documentation

Hermetiske Skygger and Pachinko presents:

Bård Torgersen

Oei Oa::: alt snakker

Oey Oe::: everything speaks

12 September 2025

  • Documentation

    Hermetiske Skygger and Pachinko presents Bård Torgersen – Oei Oa::: alt snakker / Oey Oe::: everything speaks

    Book Launch and Performance

    Oei Oa::: alt snakker / Oey Oe::: everything speaks: a novel masquerading as scribbles? A long poem disguised as photography? This book brings together Bård Torgersen’s photographs and asemic writing. Designed by Stener Vaagland, it marks the debut publication from Torgersen’s new publishing house, Aporia.

    Performance: Sound poetry and live writing by Bård Torgersen.

    Bård Torgersen (b. 1967) is a writer, poet, and musician. He debuted in 2005 with the novel Alt skal vekk (“Everything Must Go”), and has since worked across a wide range of genres and forms. He has published over twenty books – including novels, poetry, and prose – as well as numerous sound and text-based works. Torgersen has performed in Norway, across Europe, and in Japan, and has collaborated with a variety of writers, musicians, and artists. His work has been published in Norway, Germany, the USA, and the UK.

Terminal of Happiness

Saman Kamyab

26 April—24 May 2025

  • Terminal of Happiness
    Saman Kamyab

    Documentation

    Opening 25 April
    On view 26 April—24 May 2025


    Champions, swan, corn, gear lever, table for two, restored harmony, a man with cigarettes in a freshly laundered shirt and figure with exposed underwear. Terminal of Happiness, an exhibition by Saman Kamyab on view at Pachinko, Oslo.

    Saman Kamyab lives and works in Oslo. Recent projects include WESTERN, Centralbanken, Oslo; Kunsthall Oslo, Oslo; Swap, Celin, Oslo; Foil, Tag Team Studio, Bergen; Trifolii, WIELS Contemporary Arts Centre, Brussels and Crop, Podium, Oslo. 

Verdensfasaden

Urd J. Pedersen

1—29 March 2025

  • Verdensfasaden
    Urd J. Pedersen

    1 March—29 March 2025

    Documentation

    Opening Friday 28 February 18:00—21:00

    Concert(s) from 19:00 with BRUGD (Brage J. Pedersen & Urd J. Pedersen)

    Cassette tape release

    Urd J. Pedersen (b. 1989, Stavanger) received her Master's degree from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2018. Her works have been acquired by prestigious institutions including the National Museum, the Norwegian Parliament and Stavanger Art Museum. Pedersen has exhibited extensively in recent years, with solo and group shows across Norway including Oslo, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Lillehammer and Bodø. Alongside her visual art practice, Pedersen is a musician and forms one half of the duo BRUGD.

    This exhibition is supported by NBK and Arts Council Norway

NEW WORKS

Fredrik Berberg

18 January—15 February 2025

  • NEW WORKS
    Fredrik Berberg

    Documentation

    18 January—15 February
    Pachinko, Grønlandsleiret 47C, Oslo

    Pachinko is pleased to present NEW WORKS, an exhibition comprising three sculptures by Oslo-based artist Fredrik Berberg. Through a perspective that is both analytical and imaginative, the exhibition deals both with structures in nature, virtual spaces and translation.

    Berberg’s process begins in the clean, diffuse-lit space of digital software, where he sketches and models his sculptures. This virtual environment, characterised by a uniform, non-directional lighting, provides a highly controlled, but ultimately flat and ghostly space. When these designs move into the real world, where matter (and especially Pachinko) is inherently “dirty” and subject to use and wear, the sculptures keep some of their diffuse smoothness. Although altered and ultimately compromised, the perceptual blur remains whether through the simulated glow of a screen or the ambient warmth of a gallery.

    The exhibition space itself feels slightly off – both overexposed and dim – setting the stage for three sculptures that share this sense of quiet distortion. The most condensed work in this exhibition, Stuttering (attitude), is a vertical array of white-lacquered stilettos. Originally designed to evoke a cat arching its back, the stiletto follows a dual conceptual thread, both common to the practice of the artist: one of biological mimicry and another of aesthetic obfuscation, masking the ordinary shape of the foot. Another, Fashion statement, rests on three headless dogs, each tripods, while the third piece, Gesture (Palm Tree), is held upright by a tin-cast, aqua-chrome tennis sock. In each work, the base – whether stiletto, paw or sock – connects to Bataille’s writing about the big toe[1]: it is where the body meets the ground, both literally and symbolically.

    Fredrik Berberg (b. 1986) is a visual artist based in Oslo with education from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHiB). His sculptures are composed of elements that point towards both nature, architecture and design, where organic and industrial expressions are mixed together. Berberg works with various materials, creating his works through 3D printing, casting and modelling. He has exhibited in numerous locations around Norway, including Kunsthall Oslo, Golsa, Hordaland Art Centre, QB Gallery, Kristiansand Kunsthall and Telemark Art Centre.

    The exhibition is supported by Billedkunstnernes Hjelpefond, Kunstsentrene i Norge, and Arts Council Norway.

    —

    [1]”Life entails, in fact, seeing oneself as a back and forth movement from refuse to the ideal, and from the ideal to refuse -- a rage that is easily directed against an organ as base as the foot”

    Georges Bataille, “The Big Toe”, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, edited by Allan Stoekl, 1985

Tips of the Sung

Samuel Brzeski

Book launch, reading and exhibition

15–16 November 2024

  • Tips of the Sung
    Samuel Brzeski

    Book launch, reading and exhibition
    15–16 November
    Pachinko, Grønlandsleiret 47C, Oslo

    Please join us 15 November 17:00-19:00
    Performative reading at 17:30

    Pachinko is pleased to invite you to the book launch and exhibition of Tips of the Sung by artist and writer Samuel Brzeski. The book is published by Lydgalleriet / Vibrational Semantics, Bergen.

    Tips of the sung is a collection of interdisciplinary texts from Brzeski composed over the past five years whilst he has been Associate Artist at Lydgalleriet. The collection brings together performance scripts for voice and video with newly composed texts for the page. Centring on the vibrations of the voice, the texts exist somewhere between signification and delirium, at times making more sound than sense.

    Tips of the Sung is full of bumbling mumbles, meandering hums, homophones, inner voices, affirmations, motivations, subvocalisations, resolutions, errors in speech production, peach seduction, car maintenance manuals, self-help fallacies, roomy echo chambers, overheard language lessons, morning meditations, and other forms of verbal rehearsal at the limits of language.

    The video installation Blake fruid, which features in the book, will also be installed in the gallery for the duration.

    Happening concurrently with the new book fair Kunstbok Oslo, the launch event will take place on Friday 15 November at 5pm and will include a performative reading from Brzeski. The gallery will stay open Saturday 16th, for a further opportunity to view Blake fruid and buy a copy of the book.

    Tips of the Sung is designed by Mads Andersen and supported by Arts Council Norway and Norwegian Visual Artists Fund.

niilas helander

it takes the earth

to make a feather fall

6 October–3 November 2024

  • Documentation

    Pachinko is pleased to present it takes the earth to make a feather fall, an exhibition composed by niilas helander.

    “Where does queer Sámi art begin, and with which actors? I am, of course, not only referring to humans; non-human cultures also play a role in many Sámi people’s lives and understanding of the world. What art is, who has made it, and for what purpose becomes something quite different within such a framework compared to what the classical Western art historical tradition can offer. As the poet Anna Mendelssohn once wrote in a poem: “Framing is a sociopolitical act.” I will therefore take a different methodology as my starting point when I put together a chapter on queer Sámi art for this exhibition.

    Nils-Aslak Valkepää (or Áillohaš, as he was also known), Arnhild Haagensen, Gjert Rognli, and Ingrid Frivold are the individuals who drew me to the work for this exhibition. Their works — sculptures, photographs, music, the sound of drums, words, and the sound of words, tattoos and shamanism, stones that can fly, northern lights, tradition, renewal, and queer Sámi bodies — are all elements that, in addition to sacred mountains and stones, take up space in this small museum exhibition of 6 square meters. From the art they have created, I have spun new ideas about gravity, spirituality, elegance, falling, cosmic movement, gift culture, identity, and responsibility. Humanity is only one part of the universe and must therefore not be placed at its center. I believe this latter point is a common thread running through all these artistic practices, where the willingness to explore that which is greater than humanity stands out as a central force.

    Sacred mountains, stones, and places have taught us much about what happens when one breaks the contract between humans and nature — the contract you signed when you were born. We have relatives in the animal and plant kingdoms and belong to a web of relationships that extends far beyond the individual. It is not only humans who can create meaning. Non-human life forms also engage in aesthetic and ethical pleasures. Or, to put it another way: What makes you believe that only humans can organize life according to their own needs? Here we must listen to the phonetics of proximity, to that which brings us closer to the earth and to one another.

    - niilas”

    The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication over kart vi fortsatt ikke har funnet opp with poems by niilas helander.

    Image: Gjert Rognli - Fucking Gay-Biru Bonju-Jævla homo

Sofie Amalie Andersen

&   Thyra    Dragseth

MARBLES

23 August—22 September 2024

  • Documentation

    24 August – 22 September 2024
    Please join us for the opening on 23 August 7-9pm

    Pachinko is very pleased to present Marbles, an exhibition by Sofie Amalie Andersen and Thyra Dragseth. Domestic, dream-like, unnerving, Dragseth and Andersen’s work considers the unstable mirroring effect of relationship conflicts.

    "I am my own fever."
    Hélène Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa

    Marbles is a transgeneric love story about conflict and relationship dynamics, refraction and fragmentation. The exhibition consists of a series of sculptural interventions and a film, presented in four chapters with an asynchronous soundtrack. Set within a domestic, yet alienating space, the film gradually turns into a hall of broken mirrors as the two protagonists (assumed lovers) unwillingly play out a dialectical game of recognition and estrangement. They may want the same, feel the same, but contradiction has become the only possible movement as the identity of each is a reduction to a mirrored singularity, a totality, therefore, a stopping of movement.

    The title of the show, Marbles, refers to both the combative and psychological aspects of relationship conflicts: playing with and potentially losing one’s marbles, serving heartbreaking oneliners towards that other person for all the marbles worth. In the exhibition, such marbles are hanging as a curtain that at the same time reveals and disguises what is at stake, while the fragmented desires and fears of the protagonists continually play each other off the board. Meanwhile, the changing perspectives – the mirror effect – removes any chances of reconciliation and leaves the scene unsettled and fractured.

    Sofie Amalie Andersen (1989) is a Danish visual artist. She is educated from the Malmö Art Academy (MFA 2021) and Oslo Art Academy (BFA 2018) and in 2022 she participated in the Maumaus International Study program in Lisbon. Andersen works with a broad range of materials and mediums – from sculpture and installation to text, printed matter and film. Her composite and contrasting works reflect her own dubious questions regarding reality. Often merging traditional artistic techniques with industrial DIY aesthetics, she seeks to provoke an increased awareness of those interlaced material, emotional and linguistic structures that surround us. In her work she stresses moments of fragility, tension and ambiguity, which, in her view, are key concepts of life itself. Sofie Amalie Andersen is also director of the exhibition space SOL in Nexø (DK), from where she has been curating and organising exhibitions for a number of international artists since 2019.

    Thyra Dragseth (1993) is a Norwegian visual artist. She lives and works between Lisbon and Oslo from where she is currently attending the MFA program at the National Academy of the Arts. Dragseth works multidisciplinary with photography, film, text, and installation. Her works often arise from her own lived experiences and perception, becoming pieces of translated reality. In this sense, Dragseth's work relates to the ethical landscape of artistic methodology — how to handle other people's perspectives and shared memories. She often collaborates with both colleagues and non-artists, implementing collaboration itself as a method for further reflection in her practice.

    -

    Marbles is a continuation of an exhibition of the same title shown at Ostra, Lisbon, in July 2024. It is supported by Kulturdirektoratet, Statens Kunstfond, Nordic Culture Point and Statens Værksteder for Kunst (Copenhagen)

    The artists would like to thank:

    Celine Engebrigtsen, James Newitt, Pedro Rocha, Rita Duarte, Paul Tracey, Maíra Botelho and Marco Antão.

22 August: Book launch, discussion and screening

Arisa Purkpong

Punched Card

With a film screening of Claudia von Alemann

and a discussion between Alemann, Purkpong and Anna R. Winder

  • Documentation

    Book launch and screening: Arisa Purkpong – Punched Card


    22 August, 17:00–20:00
    Goethe-Institut Norwegen, Maridalsveien 33P, Oslo

    Pachinko, in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Norwegen, is pleased to invite you to the launch event for Arisa Purkpong’s publication Punched Card, published by Fat Vampire Press, Berlin. The event will take place on 22 August and will include a book presentation, a film screening, and a discussion between artist Arisa Purkpong, filmmaker Claudia von Alemann, and publisher Anna R. Winder.

    The publication Punched Card is based on two interviews conducted by Purkpong with feminist filmmaker and activist Claudia von Alemann in Düsseldorf in 2020 and 2022. It also includes a poem by artist and writer Jana Buch (DE) and a text by film scholar and research librarian Ingrid S. Holtar (NO), as well as drawings and photographs by Purkpong. The book is a result of the exhibition of the same title at Pachinko in July 2023 and is designed by Studio Thomas Spallek.

    In 1975, filmmaker Claudia von Alemann was invited by the Goethe-Institut Norwegen to hold film screenings in Bergen and Oslo. Drawing on this historical connection and its significance to the publication, this event will present a screening of two of von Alemann’s films: ...es kommt drauf an, sie zu verändern (...the point is to change it, 1972) and Aus eigener Kraft – Frauen in Vietnam (1971).

    The screening will be followed by an in-person film discussion between Claudia von Alemann, Arisa Purkpong and Anna R. Winder. The panel will discuss the films and their relation to the publication, as well as the connection between the feminist film movements in Germany and Norway.

    About the films
    * * * The screening contains depiction and description of violence and torture * * *

    Aus eigener Kraft – Frauen in Vietnam

    Claudia von Alemann / 1971 / Germany / 21' / German, french / SUBS EN

    …es kommt drauf an, sie zu verändern (...the point is to change it)

    Claudia von Alemann / 1972  / Germany / 53' / German / SUBS EN

    The event is supported by Art Council Norway

Anna Sofie Mathiasen

Nursery

20 June—10 August 2024

  • Documentation

    Anna Sofie Mathiasen
    Nursery
    Opening 20 June 18-20

    Pachinko is pleased to present a new exhibition by Danish artist Anna Sofie Mathiasen. This exhibition marks a continuation of Mathiasen's ongoing exploration of the relationship between the physical environment and mental well-being, with a focus on a particular story from Dikemark psychiatric hospital (Asker, NO) about penguins.
    In the 1930s, a psychiatrist attempted to cheer up patients by introducing penguins. However, the animals unfortunately did not survive the conditions. Dominating the exhibition is a large-scale watercolor drawing, spanning two meters in length, depicting a waddle of young penguins by the lake Verkensvannet at Dikemark. Accompanying the drawing are a series of ceramic penguin eggs, resting on pillows sewn from original textiles from the psychiatric hospital.
    Mathiasen's work draws inspiration from nesting, care and vulnerability, all themes central to the idea of a nursury. Eggs with their heavy symbolism and their potential of hatching or breaking are very present in this chapter of the exhibition, hinting at the absurdities and contradictions inherent in the relationship between mental health and the physical environment. The penguin motif, recurring in Mathiasen's practice, serves as a symbol of vulnerability and resilience in the face of challenging circumstances.
    This exhibition follows her solo show Folly in 2023 at O-Overgaden, Copenhagen. The artist’s own efforts to manage her mental health, in combination with the absurd history of the Dikemark penguins, prompted the artist to revisit a childhood pastime of building DIY wooden penguins with her dad. These figures now populate the sister exhibition at Nitja senter for samtidskunst (15 June–11 August), while the nursery has found its way to Pachinko. Together, the elements embody the paradoxical relationship of psychiatry and environment, where both the untamed nature and the meticulously artificial can contribute to a cyclical journey of healing.


    Anna Sofie Mathiasen (b. 1995, DK) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo in 2020. Her work has been exhibited at Kunstnernes Hus, Galleri K and Kunsthall Oslo, all in Oslo (NO); Guttormgaards arkiv, Blaker (NO); O-Overgaden and Sol (DK); and Valencian Institute of Modern Art (ES).

    The exhibition is generously supported by: The City of Oslo, Art Council Norway, Fond for Lyd og Bilde, Blix Fonden, Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Statens Værksteder for Kunst.

Metallic Muses

Damla Kilickiran, Lesia Vasylchenko, Goodiepal

Future Fair, New York. 1 —4 May 2024

  • Metallic Muses pointed to the future in a way particular to our political reality and future. Not by predicting it, but by pointing to alternative models and modes of production and community in the creative field, through transnational experiences.

    The exhibiting artists were Lesia Vasylchenko (1990), a Ukrainian artist and curator based in Oslo, working with visual cultures, media technologies, and chronopolitics; Damla Kilickiran (1991), a Swedish-Turkish artist who worked with alternate states of being as a method for image production and knowledge through spiritistic thought traditions and psychology; and Goodiepal (1974), a legendary Danish/Faroese experimental electronic musician, performance artist, composer, lecturer, and horologist.

    The shared exhibition was a presentation of Goodiepal’s time-machine pieces in the form of modified and beautifully restored luxury wristwatches; a presentation of Lesia’s sculptures, focusing on chronopolitics in a time of crisis in geopolitics and art; and a series of drawings by Kilickiran, informed by a Jungian interpretation of the formation of the self.

    Pachinko's participation in the fair was generously supported by Office for Contemporary Art Norway and the Norwegian Consulate General, New York.

Nudging and Spooling

Tris Vonna-Michell

at Vermilion Sands, Copenhagen

4 May—1 June 2024

  • Organised in collaboration with Vermilion Sands, Copenhagen

    Documentation


    A shipment containing hundreds of boxes of materials, many of which contained works, often seemingly incomplete and undefined works, arrived at my studio. It was sent from England after discovering that my father had been producing artworks, unbeknown to me, for several decades. Boxes containing disparate works, his and others, documentations and disintegrations.

    A new publication Dataton Dialogues (published by Mount Analogue, 2024) by Tris Vonna-Michell, Silje Iversen Kristiansen, Henrik Folleso Egeland and Anna Clawson will be launched at the opening.

    Documentation
    Review (Danish)


    This exhibition is kindly supported by:
    Danish Arts Foundation, The City of Copenhagen, The City of Oslo

The Tehran Summit 2024

Chthonic

Realism

Summoning Ghosts and Monsters

18—24 May 2024

  • Pachinko and The Tehran Summit proudly announces the lineup for the third edition of the Tehran Summit themed “Chthonic Realism: Summoning Ghosts and Monsters.”

    Departing from the concepts of horror, speculation, the unknown, and the future, the summit explores: What happens when contemporary artists summon the ghosts of antiquity or monsters beyond the boundaries of time and space? How can the past beckon us through the obscurity of the unknowable and towards a multitude of Futures? And how this may alter perceptions of reality?

    Scheduled from May 18 to May 24, the audience is invited to a series of talks by distinguished practitioners exploring our concepts of reality and existence in the world, free from established relations and a world without us, a non-human world in opposition to an Anthropocentric one.

    Speakers: Coco Fusco, Santiago Sierra, Pamela Karimi, Xiaoyu Weng, Bo Wang, Shumon Basar, Jason Babak Mohaghegh, Tania Bruguera, and Ghazel.

    Curated by Erfan Ghiasi and Una Mathiesen Gjerde / In collaboration with Pachinko by Mathilde Carbel and Kristian Schrøder.

    The Tehran Summit and Pachinko are inviting audiences from different fields of the arts and philosophy to register to access each talk digitally. For Oslo-based audiences, the program will also be screened live in Pachinko’s exhibition space. Across the span of a week, every night will feature a distinguished speaker delving into the intricacies of the theme.

  • Coco Fusco: “Art and Democracy: Testing the Limits”May 18, 19:00-20:30 CEST

    Santiago Sierra: May 19, 19:00-20:30 CEST

    Pamela Karimi: “Gestural Feminism: On Art and Advocacy in Iran”

    Postponed to June 7 due to a work emergency, 19:00-20:30 CEST

    Xiaoyu Weng in conversation with Bo Wang: “An Asian Ghost Story”May 21, 19:00-20:30 CEST

    Shumon Basar: “LORECORE TO ENDCORE AND BACK AGAIN”May 22, 19:00-20:30 CEST

    Jason Babak Mohaghegh: “The Unlost: Resurrection of Forgotten Creatures”May 23, 19:00-20:30 CEST

    Ghazel in conversation with Tania Bruguera: “Art for the Not Yet”May 24, 19:00-20:30 CEST

Stanley Brouwn & Rasmus Sørnes Joined

The Guild of The Viking Klokkers

Goodiepal

29 February—31 March 2024

  • Goodiepal & Pachinko Presents: Stanley Brouwn & Rasmus Sørnes Joined The Guild of The Viking Klokkers

    “As the extra-disciplinary pied piper on flute, magic strings, bowed instruments, clockworks, computer systems and synthesizers, he has summoned and modified a collection of works by artists as varied as Jonathan Monk, Sufie Elmgreen, David Shrigley and Peter Schmeichel, alongside a selection of vandalised luxury watches. However he casts his spells, the effects are usually boundary-blurring, with little to no regard for distinctions between disciplines, nations, individual identities and taste. Interconnected, this permutation of the collection focuses on strange time, value, and resonance computing.”

    About Goodiepal
    Goodiepal or Gæoudjiparl van den Dobbelsteen, whose given name is Parl Kristian Bjørn Vester, is a Danish/Faroese experimental electronic musician, performance artist, composer, lecturer, and horologist. His work engages with the past, present, and future of computer music, compositional practices and resonance computing, and his concept of Radical Computer Music. His tours have included 150 universities internationally. Goodiepal has exhibited widely, including exhibitions at Museet for Samtidskunst (DK), Statens Museum for Kunst (DK), Kunsthall Oslo (NO), Ormston House (IE). At the time of writing, he has released 44 albums and countless sound works.

Dataton Dialogues

Tris Vonna-Michell, Henrik Follesø Egeland

23 October 2023—January 2024

  • Press release

    Pachinko is pleased to announce Dataton Dialogues, a residency with artists Tris Vonna-Michell and Henrik Follesø Egeland.

    Organised in collaboration with PRAKSIS, the residency invites the two artists to work at Pachinko from 23 October 2023 to January 2024, during which they will use a 1970s Dataton MIC 3 Programmer for PAX dissolve units to generate audiovisual experiments that respond to the artistic practices of Ed Vonna-Michell (1950-2020), Tris’s father. As well as drawing on the Vonna-Michell family’s history of exploring self-organised art, the residency will invite contributions from other individual researchers and groups. Through this process, the residents aim to explore and expand the concept of authorship and develop new ways of working with archival, image and sound materials.

    Conducted in two phases, the residency will lead to the exhibition of a slide and sound installation at Pachinko in early 2024. Phase 1, focused on production, research and experimentation, will take place in October–November 2023, and Phase 2, in December, will share and further develop the process with the public through talks, presentations and visits.

    Tris Vonna-Michell is an internationally renowned artist based in Oslo and Stockholm. Vonna-Michell’s work utilises a plethora of technical devices, modes of presentation and installational approaches, encompassing performance, audio recordings, slide projections, poetry, sound poetry, printed matter, photography and film.

    Henrik Follesø Egeland is an Oslo-based visual artist and photographer, and a graduate from the Oslo National Academy of Arts (MFA) as well as the University of Roehampton (BFA). Through a technical engagement with photography, his work operates both within and outside traditional photographic representation.

    Organised in collaboration with centre for art and learning PRAKSIS

    Events will take place between PRAKSIS and Pachinko.

    Image Tris Vonna-Michell, Boxed Matter, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Jan Mot, Brussels

Extended Dissolve

Henrik Follesø Egeland

7–10 December 2023

  • Using slit-scan photography and 1970s image slide PAX dissolve units, Henrik Follesø Egeland’s Extended Dissolve takes a closer look at the static image in a constant state of change.

    Through a combination of double- and back-projection techniques, Extended Dissolve experiments with still images in continuous dissolution. The slides on show have been captured in a specially constructed slit-scan camera – the technology most commonly used in finish line photos – at the Gudbrandsdalslågen river in south-eastern Norway. In conjunction with two image projectors, the installation is controlled by a Dataton system allowing the images to be in a constant process of seamless transition, collapsing the common idea of the photographic moment.

    The term “dissolve” plays a central role in the work, carrying a dual significance of both a technical process and a poetic potential. It is a state that is uniquely characterised by its simultaneous passivity and activity, where constructive processes coexist with elements of dissolution.This exhibition is the first presentation of preliminary results from the residency Dataton Dialogues. Phase 1, centred around production, research and experimentation took place in October–November; phase 2, in December–January, now seeks to open the process to the public through talks, presentations and visits.

    Organised in collaboration with PRAKSIS, the residency Dataton Dialogues brings Tris Vonna-Michell and Henrik Follesø Egeland to work at Pachinko from 23 October 2023 to January 2024, during which they will use a 1970s Dataton MIC 3 Programmer for PAX dissolve units to generate audiovisual experiments.

    Henrik Follesø Egeland (b. 1994) is an Oslo-based visual artist and photographer, and a graduate from the Oslo National Academy of Arts (MFA) as well as the University of Roehampton (BFA). Through a technical engagement with photography, his work operates both within and outside traditional photographic representation. Exploring alternative means of photographic recording and reproduction, as well as possibilities of transmutation. This technical experimentation is used as an investigative approach, to explore ideas of landscape, memory and perceptions of reality. Pulling together webs of interconnected yet disparate ideas and notions, into new constellations.

A Fungus Amungus

Ingrid Torvund

29 September–22 October 2023

  • Documentation

    Opening 29 September 18:00–21:00

    Ingrid Torvund (NO) is an artist and filmmaker who works in the fields of film, sculpture and drawing, and whose works explore intertwining connections between nature, culture and mythology, as well as themes of alienation and familiarity.

    Torvund graduated with a BA from the Oslo Academy of the Arts in 2012. Previous solo exhibitions include Kunsthall Grenland, Spriten Kunsthall, Rom for kunst, Soft Gallery, Kunsthall Oslo and Van Etten. She has also been part of group exhibitions at Southbank Centre in London, Bomuldsfabrikken Kunsthall, Tegnerforbundet, Lillehammer kunstmuseum and PYTON, Oslo. She has been twice included in Høstutstillingen – the annual National Art Exhibition. Ingrid Torvund works are represented in the collection of the Municipality of Oslo and Kiasma in Finland.

    The exhibition was kindly supported by the City of Oslo and Arts Council Norway

Time Killer

Mette Hammer Juhl

18 August–19 September, 2023

  • Opening 18 August 19:00–22:00

    Mette Hammer Juhl (DK) is a visual artist based in Copenhagen working with sound, sculpture, video and site-specific installations. Her work, often collaborative and based on collective research, explores how our cultural understandings of fun and entertainment are shaped through economic, social and political ideologies, and how this, in turn, has transformed our ideas of freedom, escape, boredom and recreation.

    Prior exhibitions include Hygum Kunstmuseum (DK), Four Boxes Gallery (DK), Bergen Kunsthall (NO), Den Frie (DK), Institut Funder Bakke (DK), Vermilion Sands (DK), First Draft (AU), Copenhagen Contemporary (DK), and Auto Italia (UK).

    The exhibition was kindly supported by Oslo kommune

Punched card

Arisa Purkpong

23 June–23 July, 2023

  • Arisa Purkpong (b. 1995) lives and works in Düsseldorf and Oslo.
    They studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Trisha Donnelly and Christopher Williams. In their artistic practice, Arisa Purkpong uses the media of video, photography and graphics, which they collage to make publications and installations. Their work has previously been shown at Trafo Kunsthall, Asker (2023), the Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf (2021); Baustelle Schaustelle - Raum für Junge Kunst, Essen/Düsseldorf (2020); Am Ende des Tages, Düsseldorf (2020); KIT - Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf (2019); and Tentacles Gallery, Bangkok (2019). They developed a film screening for the event series Another Eye at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2022) and the Feminist Film Program (with the support of Claudia von Alemann and Christopher Williams) at Black Box Kino, Düsseldorf (2020).

  • A hand-stitched publication was published on the occasion of the exhibition. Download excerpt here.

    Edition: 25

    Prize: 500,00 NOK

    Format: 16,4 x 23 cm

  • Audio file coming soon

    Arisa Purkpong in conversation with film scholar Ingrid S. Holtar: Discussing the exhibition and feminist film history in Norway and Germany

    Moderator: Sophie Holzberger

    Bios:
    Ingrid S. Holtar is a film scholar living in Oslo. She received a Ph.D. in Film Studies from NTNU Trondheim in 2022 with the doctoral thesis "Feminism on Screen: Feminist filmmaking in Norway in the 1970s". She is currently working as a research librarian in the Section for Visual Media and Conservation at the National Library of Norway. Her research is oriented towards feminist historiography and feminist film culture in Scandinavia.

    Sophie Holzberger is a PhD student at the Cinema Studies Department at New York University. Their PhD project examines collaborative dimensions of feminist filmmaking as political practice and is specifically interested in a relational historiography of West German film. They are currently part of a collective organizing the film festival "feminist elsewheres" which will celebrate over 50 years of feminist film work at Kino Arsenal in November 2023.

Feelings for strangers

Natalie Price Hafslund, Javon Bennett

26 March, 2023

  • I don’t know you yet
    maybe I never will
    but I have feelings for you
    for you to have
    or for you to leave
    I can put the feelers out
    and I can be strange
    and you can eat cake
    if you like

    Javon Bennett works as a baker to create deliciously edible installations. Playfully exploring ingredients to stretch and extract flavours, textures and colours, applicating with a somewhat painterly eye and approach. His creations serve to hold a purposeful presence to be shared and gorged; to bring fleeting bliss with fantastical beauty. All the way down.


    Natalie Price Hafslund is an artist and writer based in Oslo experimenting with notions of sociality, consciousness and narrative. Previous exhibitions include The Will to Believe, SET, London 2022, L’angoisse Dominicale, Treize, Paris 2022, Mirror of Impalpable Nudity, GAO, London 2020, Imagoholics, Elephant, Los Angeles 2019 and Clean Criminal, UKS and Kunstnernes Hus Oslo 2018.