Tree Test: Kunstgarasjen, Bergen
Eamon O´Kane's multidisciplinary practice has generally been drawn towards architectural contexts. This he will continue in this exhibition in Kunstgarasjen. Here, O`Kane will explore the history of humans' relationship to the natural world. The title of the exhibition, Tre-Prøve, is a play on the term Baum Test or Tree Test.
Kunstgarasjen is very proud to welcome you to an exhibition with Eamon O`Kane, professor of painting at Bergen Academy of the Arts. Kunstgarasjen and Kunsthøgskolen now become neighbors in Møllendalsveien, and thus form two of the main attractions in the new Kulturaksen by Store Lungegårdsvann.
Eamon O´Kane's multidisciplinary practice has generally been drawn towards architectural contexts. This he will continue in this exhibition in Kunstgarasjen. Here, O`Kane will explore the history of humans' relationship to the natural world. The title of the exhibition, Tre-Prøve, is a play on the term Baum Test or Tree Test.
The Baum Test was a method developed by the Swiss psychologist Charles Koch in 1952, which is used to analyze a patient's personality and underlying emotional history. Patients were asked to draw a broad-leaved tree on a blank sheet, whereupon a psychologist analyzed various aspects of the tree drawing, in addition to the person's behavior and comments during the test. In the exhibition, O`Kane will show a new series of large wooden drawings on paper that reflect this test, and which also refer to the more famous Rorschach test. Other works in the exhibition include animations of charcoal drawings and videos related to coal and carbon. Carbon is found in all known life forms and is, apart from oxygen, the most widespread element on earth, and thus the basis for all life.
O`Kane also shows a new interactive installation of wooden objects, which acts as a snapshot of the carbon on its way to decomposition. Here we have brought in two whole, full-grown trees in the exhibition room, which will be processed during the exhibition period. The work is inspired by the theories of the educators Maria Montessori, who founded the Montessori school, and Friedrich Froebel, the kindergarten's inventor. Froebel's educational toy set, Froebel gifts, which consist of small colorful wooden blocks and other objects are some of the references in this work. This is how we see the smallest constituents of things being transformed into natural plants and man-made objects, at the same time as we see ourselves reflected in the image of the trees.
Eamon O`Kane's work has been shown at a number of major art institutions in Europe and the United States, and he has received several major awards, such as The Taylor Art Award, The Tony O`Malley Award, Fulbright Award and artist residencies in Dublin, Rome, Paris . He is now a professor of painting at Bergen Art Academy.
Review
At first glance, trees and wood in various forms seem to be the focal point of Eamon O’Kane’s exhibition at Kunstgarasjen. Two huge trees - they must be at least eight meters high - are located in the center of the gallery room, and on the floor below are countless, systematically arranged wooden blocks and sticks. Large charcoal drawings of different types of wood hang on the end wall.
The exhibition, entitled tree test, turns out to be quite complex. The charcoal drawings refer to a personality test - a so-called "Baum Test" - in which the patient's drawing of a tree is used to analyze his psychological condition, not unlike the more well-known Rorschach test. The wooden blocks are taken from the educator Friedrich Fröbel's construction set for children. And the two trees? After the exhibition, they will be transported to the Norwegian Academy of the Arts, where they will be burned and turned into charcoal.
These works are accompanied by several video works, and through these it becomes clear that the trees, wooden blocks and charcoal drawings represent different stages in the life cycle of the carbon atom. Carbon is the most important component of all organic life on earth. And of course one can hardly mention the word "carbon" before the whole climate crisis comes furiously. This is also the more minor key tone that underlies O'Kane's material exploration.
But are there really clear connections between learning tools, psychology tests and the climate crisis? The answer to that depends on how willing one is to follow O’Kane’s associative jumps, which may be overly resilient. O’Kane has worked with the Fröbel building sets in several exhibitions before, and one can suspect him of bringing them to Kunstgarasjen out of old habit. Nevertheless, there are parallels here if one thinks of the carbon atom as the building blocks of the living world, and sees the lines that go from Fröbel's ideas about brick constructions as part of the child's natural development, to the rapidly changing man-made landscapes that appear in several of the videos in the exhibition . The diagnosis made through the exhibition's "Tree test" is then ambivalent: the human drive to build is as destructive as it is constructive.
Simen Joachim Helsvig
https://visp.no/simen-helsvig-om-utstillingen-tre-prove-eamon-okane/