HM Queen Sonja and Håvard Homstvedt
«Mellom rom»
HM Queen Sonja and Håvard Homstvedt started their collaboration in March 2022. Both artists wished to support the Queen Sonja Print Award Foundation, through a shared project, where the starting point was still life, interiors and the familiar. The exhibition will first be shown in Stavanger, then in Trondheim, Lofoten and later Oslo.
The project’s title «Mellom rom”, literally means “the room in-between”. It may refer to a physical space, but may also connote the more abstract, in the interval or interlude. Conceivably, suggesting distance and proximity or expressing the time or space between two stages and states. Maybe it is a breathing space or, in this case, a balancing point between two artistic practices, a meeting place for artistic partnership, where two artists meet, discuss, adjust, and explore.
Her Majesty the Queen, has, as in many previous projects, used the camera as a sketch book. This time the outset is not photos of nature, but rather a selection of interior segments from familiar rooms. Håvard Homstvedt has further remodeled the photographic segments into sketches and drawings. The two artists have experimented with the different sketch elements and created new distinctive works of art, with pronounced furnishings and settings. The art works are signed by both. The artists have challenged one another, have had engaging discussions on color, and formal choices, at the same time as they have worked on and with the same printing plates. Incorporated into the project are monotypes, as well as edition prints.
A recurrent element in the larger monotypes is a vase-shape, designed and used by the Queen in her ceramic production. Here the form is used as inspiration for the printed works, thereby referencing Her Majesty’s other artistic output. In combination with Homstvedt’s sophisticated and expansive use of color, still lifes are created in partnership. The project is an homage to the familiar and the intimate. The homely and the private, can be a breathing space. Art may also have that very same function. In the different series, both artists’ fascination with the tactile and textural, light and shade, as well as spatiality, come to the fore.
Queen Sonja and Håvard Homstvedt have visited three different print studios during the project; Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) on Long Island, New York, Edition Copenhagen in Denmark and Trafo kunstproduksjon in Asker. Different printing techniques, from more traditional lithographic prints on stone to monotypic stencil prints, have been explored and are incorporated into the project.