Gringo Bar
June 22 – July 2, 1996
The Art Festival in Lofoten, North of Norway
Inghild Karlsen and two other artists (Astrid Eidseth Rygh and Inger Haugen) worked with landscape in a broad sense during this art festival. With the title “Art in Nature”, it added a new orientation to the festival. Karlsen creates dialogues between her installations and their surroundings, exploring similarities and differences across various cultures. She moves objects and the perceived uniqueness from one place to another. Following this, it lets them take on new meanings without losing their originality. With inspiration from Brazil, she built the Gringo Bar in Svolvær. The bar is part of a series of sculptures that Karlsen calls Outdoor–Indoor. The associations go to the sheds in urban slums where the materials are collected from landfills. The bar thus becomes an “urban” work in contrast to the northern Norwegian nature.
They developed installations that would disintegrate over time, blending into the weather and nature itself. Karlsen’s work, Gringo Bar, installed on a popular tourist trail to the Tjeldbergtinden mountain, was inspired by her trip to São Paulo, where she participated in the 1994 biennial from Norway.
Photo: Maria Gradin
