Life within the four walls of the home is a recurring theme in Silje Rønneberg Hogstad's drawings. The works are expressive, beautiful and humorous, but often also have something disturbing or grotesque about them. In many ways, they are a testament to a multifaceted everyday life and to the challenges of juggling an artist's career with family life. Hogstad had children at the same time as she trained as an artist, and the combination of the role of mother and artist became something she had to deal with that has influenced her work to a great extent. For example, she is inspired by the line drawings of the children or the coffee stains on the living room table. She often borrows elements from different forms of children's culture and distorts them in a spontaneous expression where the comical and the threatening are combined. Hogstad prefers to work in large formats. She is concerned that the drawing is created in a state of presence, without thinking about results and reception. Technical errors and dead ends along the way are often integrated into the finished image, but the whole should still be tight and good in shape. It is important for her not to have full control over what the finished drawing will be. Therefore, she often exposes the images to accidents and coincidences so that the control over what happens in the work process is broken. Sometimes these accidents are real, like when she accidentally crumpled a drawing and threw it in the trash. Others are integrated into a vocabulary and are used deliberately - like pouring paint over a mediocre picture and pasting it with another picture. Maybe this will destroy the drawing completely, but maybe something interesting will also happen to work further with.
Silje Rønneberg Hogstad (b. 1977) is a graduate from The Art Academy in Oslo. She works with drawing, sculpture and text. She is part of the artist group "Institutt for Farge" (Department of Color) and writes regularly for the magazine Billedkunst. Throughout her practice, there is a curiosity about people's ability to create and experience art, and her works have often revolved around an interest in children's urge to manipulate their physical world. The graphic novel "Ting vi trenger" (Things we need) is a collaboration with cartoonist Siv Nordsveen and will be published by Jippi publishing house in 2016. This is Hogstad's first solo exhibition in Oslo.
