Encompassing painting, drawing, sculpture, text, and textiles, Ingrid Lønningdal’s practice, according to the artist, “seeks to provide an understanding of the spaces we inhabit.” Often using architecture as a starting point, many of her works are the result of detailed building studies conducted in her native Norway and abroad. The first room of Lønningdal’s exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, for instance, contains four large-scale wall hangings, three of which are informed by the AEG-Turbinenfabrik (AEG Turbine factory), located in the Berlin district of Moabit. Built under Peter Behrens in 1909, the factory can be seen as one of the first attempts to implement modernist design features in an industrial building, marking a radical departure from the more ornamental styles of the past. Made from hessian and silicate mineral paint, these works are a continuation of the series “Fibre Reinforcement” (2019– ongoing), in which, working from watercolor studies she makes in response to her source buildings, the artist uses silicate paint to explore the grid-like structure of the woven fabric.

In the exhibition’s second room, Lønningdal continues her use of these readily accessible materials but reduces the scale to allow for greater freedom and experimentation. The series “Edges” is based on buildings by the renowned German architect Bruno Taut, while the watercolors in “Beat (Stressed / Unstressed)” is an ongoing investigation of color.

Ingrid Lønningdal *1981 in Bergen, is a Norwegian artist based in Oslo. Recent solo exhibitions include Fibre Reinforcement, Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo (2019); Grooves and Ridges, Trøndelag senter for samtidskunst (2017); and Division of Space, Oslo Kunstforening (2017). She is currently working on a major public art commission for Stavanger University Hospital, Norway. Ingrid Lønningdal is a grantee of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway.