Henrik Sørlid / Cartesian Nightmare (screening at Tromsø kunstforening)

Cartesian Nightmare by Henrik Sørlid. Installation view at Tromsø Kunstforening. Photo: Mihaly Stefanovicz
Cartesian Nightmare by Henrik Sørlid. Installation view at Tromsø Kunstforening. Photo: Mihaly Stefanovicz

Henrik Sørlid participated with his new film Cartesian Nightmare (2022).
Location: Tromsø Kunstforening
Dates: 26.09-09.10.2022
Henrik Sørlid was presented in curatorial collaboration Kurant9000.

Henrik Sørlid (b. 1989) is an artist based in Tromsø (Norway/Sápmi) since the last ten years. Drawing upon Situationist notions of détournement – the hijacking and repurposing of existing cultural materials to create new worlds of meaning and affect – his collage works are produced through a sort of material analysis of visual representations of time, history and knowledge. But rather than being a vehicle of critical analysis in any narrowly defined sense, these works are searching for hidden worlds that can be seen as being implicit or camouflaged within the forms, colors and textures thought to represent a rational account of this world.

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Cartesian Nightmare (2022) is a new video work commissioned for Coast Contemporary 2022 and co-produced by Kurant9000. It is a brief meditation on the wider social, economical and spiritual impact of Cartesian mind-body dualism, with particular emphasis on how mechanistic philosophy has warped our understanding of dreams and magic, and building on the work of historian Edward Bever.
Henrik Sørlid. Photo: Maija Liisa Björklund
Henrik Sørlid. Photo: Maija Liisa Björklund

In addition to studio-based work, he has been active in several artist-run spaces and collectives, including Kurant Visningsrom, Galleri Parthenon, ComoClube and Pantheon Bar & Grill. Together with Camilla Fagerli, he has edited Dream Academy, an anthology on art education in Northern Norway, due to be published by Archive Books (Berlin). He co-founded the local artist’s union KIT (Kunstnerne i Tromsø) in 2018, and has also served as a board member of UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund/Young Artists Society).

He studied at the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art, and was a member of the artist-run space Kurant Visningsrom from 2014 to 2018.