Bjørg Taranger

Februar 2008

Video Installation / Videoinstallaatio
22.2 - 9.3. 2008

CityAngel

Opening / Avajaiset
Thursday, February 21 th, at 5 -7 p.m.
Torstaina 21. helmikuuta klo 17 – 19

Galleria Jangva
Uudenmaankatu 4-6, sisäpiha,
00120 Helsinki
www. jangva.fi

Galleria Jangva


For the second time Bjørg Taranger; a Norwegian artist living in Bergen Norway, will exhibit her
City Angel project at Galleria Jangva.
Originally this was exhibited as a part of the ArtGenda biennial in 2000, where she documented her
performance with two nurses; Arja-Leena and Paula, who were invited to make a hospital bed in
the gallery space.

The City Angel project has further developed over the past few years with new works,
performances and exhibitions in Oslo, Bergen, Ålesund and Düsseldorf.

Taranger explores the position of human life in relation to modern care values. The setting is the
urban city, and through various art forms (from minor installations to film, print, and performance)
humanity is explored through the theme of nursing.

Taranger documents repetitive actions of care carried out by nurses in actual hospitals, which are
in turn mirrored in gallery performances and then reproduced yet again through new video
performances.

The video documentation of these performances add to the second hand nature of the experience,
leading into a more modern understanding of care and ethics, something Taranger considers
essential to communication with a modern public. The balance of live performance with
documentary enriches the form of the work and creates a mutual confirmation that provides the
act with a past, present and future.

In City Angel the matter of maintenance and welfare; the practice of reworking the urban life,
turning indifference to consideration through professionalised concern and deeply felt affection, is
both celebrated and questioned in a detached and humorous, but nonetheless touching way.

Her last video work, Running Angel, brings together, in the overlapped editing, pulse and tempo,
challenges and danger- all the time connecting symbols of safety; the green pharmacy cross, the
nurses and the caretakers. The pulse goes together like a beat through the film: the pulse of the
city, of the pulse of the human beings - the rhythm of our life. www.cityangel.no – news