Under the Stomach Skin shows a series of etchings by Patricia Risopatron Berg. The motifs revolve around themes such as forests, pregnancy, the gap between humans and animals, plants, dreams and psychedelics.
After we moved to a rural town a few years ago, I had a revived relationship with the forest. Not a wild, untouched nature, but the partly cultivated, close to the city. In autumn and winter I walked pregnant, increasingly heavy on slippery roots, then in wet snow, dangling after the dog. With this series of etchings, I seek to express facets of the forest as a place of residence, physically and mentally; and as a place for change.
Pregnancy can be experienced as psychedelic. When I say “psychedelic”, it is for lack of other precise terms. The psychedelic is linked to revelations. I think of time and the details that twist, in and out of focus, become gnarled, deeper, and then completely smooth. I sit with the insight of having been two bodies in one. I think of the room that cannot be controlled. It can be friendly, even welcoming, and it can be unpredictable.
Patricia Risopatron Berg (b.1995) is educated at the Oslo Academy of the Arts, and works with graphics, drawing and painting. She has previously exhibited at Galleri RAM (Zea Mays, 2022), Akademirommet (Anima Mundi, 2022) and Muralverkstedet (2022).
The project is supported by the Norwegian Printmakers Fund.
