Born 1986 – Based in Oslo Johanne tells me about her bus rides. About how the world outside the bus window captures her attention. A line, a color. Some chipped graffiti, an old strip of road markings that’s fading away. These seemingly insignificant marks on the city’s surface suddenly stand out. They reveal themselves, expose themselves, and take on a kind of importance. In those moments, they seize her attention and she feels a need to capture them. It’s these moments that form the foundation for the images that later emerge. Remnants, traces of prints, traces of processes, memories, impressions, waste, scraps, imprints. Small traces. New life. Here, thoughts don’t matter. Thoughts don’t guide. It’s colors, shapes, and feelings. By eliminating the power of thought—by separating the body and soul from the brain—they get to operate freely. They get to operate joyfully. Depression, anxiety, phobia, call it what you will, always starts in the brain, in thought. In the mind. Look at the images, if we can call the works that. Look at the images and think about what you see. It’s a play for the gallery. A play upon your own mind. Tell me what you see, and you’ll reveal something about yourself. If you tear a map to pieces and piece it back together in new ways, what kind of world emerges? Is it the same map? Is it the same world? If you try to navigate the old world with this new map, will you always go wrong? If you go wrong enough times, will you eventually go right? Or is it right to go wrong? Isn’t that when the real, the authentic, manifests at your feet? For your mind? I wash my hands in the bathroom. I look down at the floor. I see workout clothes scattered around. I see orange, white, red, purple, black, yellow, gray, and blue. Some would see a mess on the floor. I see colors, shapes, and textures. I take a picture with my phone, but the photo can’t capture the moment. It can’t capture the essence of what I see. Capturing what captures attention. That’s often how the processes start. With moments like these on the bus. On the way to school, on the way to work, on the way home. In the everyday. On the way from one place to another. That’s when the mind is most alert. Johanne presses, prints, cuts, tears, spills, colors, sews, glues, loses, and finds. To me, it seems chaotic, but to her, there is an invisible system. The more she sees, the more she creates, the more things fit together. A line on a piece of fabric continues onto another. A color on one piece mimics the color on another, and out of these fragments, images suddenly take shape. Out of chaos, the mind forms structures, images, and maps. The images aren’t just images. They become psychedelic maps. Psychedelic psychogeographic maps. Maps that, in every possible way, will get you lost if you try to use them. That’s the point. The bus keeps moving, and the moment—the moment you latch onto, the perfect moment—slowly fades away and becomes a small picture in the mirror. Exhibition text written by Simen Godtfredsen.