Simen Stenberg
Cluster Root

The anatomy of insects' retinas, honeycomb patterns, light beams, and amber. Motion surveillance sensors, LED lights, solar panels, and color schematics. Simen Stenberg's way of combining various dualities of natural phenomena with artificial adaptations unfolds, if not holistically, at least ironically contradictive, humans' eggcorny approach to life. The sheer creativity that goes into human genius survival and imprudent lunacy diffracts an insight into Stenberg's artistic practice. The exhibition Cluster Root is a playful arena of material and linguistic combinations. It invites us to marvel at the ever-present dance between the organic and the synthetic, the mundane and the extraordinary. Biomimicry is at the core of the situation. Assemblages of dialectical ways of seeing and dwelling on how efficiency, design, and function derive from natural phenomena are evenly tickled by the poetry of human emotions and drive.

Imagine for a moment that every manmade object surrounding you intentionally echoes the rhythms of nature. It makes me think of the impossibility of how anything is not always-already mimicking nature. Disco ball aptly emphasized as an eccentric moon. - Lars Nordby

With a practice rooted in a research-based approach to objects, Simen Utsigt Stenberg (b. 1992) explores the blurred boundaries between the subject and its surroundings. Working mainly with assemblage, sculpture and photography his work has dealt with themes such as biomimicry, perception, infrastructure and design. He studied at Trondheim Art Academy, Oslo National Academy of the Arts and Malmö Art Academy, where he earned his MFA in 2019. Recent exhibitions include Strange Attractor at Afloat Contemporary (Bergen, NO) and Squeeze Operator at Konstepidemin (Gothenburg, SE).

The exhibition is supported by OCA - Office of Contemporary Art in Norway and Tequila Bar Fnky Mnky.