This winter, KODE present a site-specific work by Swedish artist Henrik Håkansson (b. 1968). The work is is literally rooted in the nature of Bergen.

The main element of the installation One Hundred and One Pieces of a Tree (Norwegian Wood is a tree – a dead alder, that the artist himself has selected from Isdalen located in the Bergen area. The tree and its roots have been dried out and then dissected into a hundred and one different pieces.

Scientific disciplines

Throughout his long career, Håkansson has worked with trees, plants, earth and insects — thereby blurring the dividing line between the exhibition space and nature. He has released the song of a Skylark as free records on vinyl, generated projects on wind tunnels for birds, and made paintings out of mosquitoes colliding with the canvas. By allowing nature to play the leading role, juxtaposing the viewer and nature, Håkansson’s work creates unexpected and disquieting results.

Håkansson makes use of methods that often resemble the systematic nature observations used in scientific disciplines, such as dissection and close-up images, while simultaneously emphasising both order and disorder. He addresses our complex relationship to nature, not only in relation to ethics and ecology, but also how nature has been defined by art and science in past centuries.