Rune Guneriussen uses man-made objects to build temporary installations in the natural settings to create his ethereal photographic works. Most ordinary every day items, such as electric lamps, books, chairs, etc.; were placed by the artist in untouched Norwegian landscapes where these objects are seemingly the only indication of the human presence. Guneriussen believes that the human approach to nature is too invasive. Therefore, with his projects, he assembles site-specific sculptures and installations creating the most enchanting of worlds, photographs them and takes them apart afterwards leaving no trace behind – as a suggestion for a more gentle approach. “This process involves the object, story, space and most important the time it is made within. It is an approach to the balance between nature and human culture, and all the sublevels of our own existence”, states the artist himself.
As an artist he believes strongly that art itself should be questioning and bewildering as opposed to patronizing and restricting. As opposed to the current fashion he does not want to dictate a way to the understanding of his art, but rather indicate a path to understanding a story.
Lover of wild spaces, the Norwegian plastic artist Rune Guneriussen has chosen them for areas of investigation. Conceptual in his approach, he surveys the most remote regions of his native country to immerse himself in landscapes untouched by human intervention. He takes the pulse, then gorges himself with the frightening spectacle of a nature punctuated by the unchanging cycle of the seasons. His artistic practice consists of the restitution, in the form of installations, of an enchanting vision of places. With obsolete objects as only material, such as books, electric lamps or even chairs, the artist re-enacts through his images the ephemeral beauty of the landscape, the intensity of the moments that animate it, to take the viewer away. on the way to a story to discover. Here, books are piled up around a tree trunk like a swarm of bees, the “book” material then seems to regain the being who generated it; farther on, electric lamps twinkling in the half-light symbolize the living, a flight of fireflies or perhaps the blooming of a mass of wild flowers, a cascade of red chairs rolling down a crevasse in the mountain announces the melting of the snow … Each cliché memorizes an ephemeral installation, unveils a process, which through the staging of the object, the only sign of a human presence, the chosen space and the time of creation, questions the relationship maintained by man with nature and, beyond, its own existence. Between aesthetics and poetry, the photographs of Rune Guneriussen are exhibited at the Olivier Waltman gallery in Paris. The opportunity to live an immersive and narrative experience guided by the sole power of the imagination.
Caroline Figwer
