Married to Literature
Lea Stuedahl, Kim Henning Andreassen, Steinar B. Hauge and George McGoldrick
city
Installation View, Married to Literature, Lea Stuedahl, Kim Henning Andreassen, Steinar B. Hauge and George McGoldrick, city, 2025
Installation View, Married to Literature, Lea Stuedahl, Kim Henning Andreassen, Steinar B. Hauge and George McGoldrick, city, 2025
Installation View, Lea Stuedahl, Collage #1, Collage #2, Collage #3, Collage #4, Foamboard, grey self-adhesive foil, transparent film, pins, 29.7 x 21 cm (each), 2025
Kim Henning Andreassen, BRUXELLES, Ink on rice paper, 68 x 35 cm, 2024; Kim Henning Andreassen, BEAUTY SOAP, Hotel soap bar, metal holder, 5 x 7 cm, 2025
Kim Henning Andreassen, BEAUTY SOAP, Hotel soap bar, metal holder, 5 x 7 cm, 2025
Kim Henning Andreassen, I found the sounds of footsteps meeting the cobblestone setting a truly special atmosphere and I was filled with the sensation of romance, nostalgia & an urge to read even more literature., Ink on rice paper, 68 x 35 cm, 2024; Kim Henning Andreassen, AMSTERDAM HILTON, Hotel soap bar, metal holder, 5 x 7 cm, 2025
Kim Henning Andreassen, AMSTERDAM HILTON, Hotel soap bar, metal holder, 5 x 7 cm, 2025
Lea Stuedahl, Collage #1, Foamboard, grey self-adhesive foil, transparent film, pins, 29.7 x 21 cm, 2025
Lea Stuedahl, Collage #2, Foamboard, grey self-adhesive foil, transparent film, pins, 29.7 x 21 cm, 2025
Lea Stuedahl, Collage #3, Foamboard, grey self-adhesive foil, transparent film, pins, 29.7 x 21 cm, 2025
Lea Stuedahl, Collage #4, Foamboard, grey self-adhesive foil, transparent film, pins, 29.7 x 21 cm, 2025
Steinar B. Hauge & George McGoldrick, Two Hands of Hard Work, Installational presentation, 35mm slide carousel, stage lights, defunct clocks, replica 17th C. costumes, Steppix dance mats, original transcripts from Arcana Coelestia (Swedenborg, E. (1880). Arcana Coelestia: index to the heavenly mysteries contained in the Holy Scripture, or Word of the Lord.), PA system, cask of John Smith ale, 2012–2025. Photo credit: Max Slaven
Married to Literature
Lea Stuedahl, Kim Henning Andreassen, Steinar B. Hauge and George McGoldrick
city
In collaboration with Royal Flush Gallery, Oslo
19–26.09.2025
Woke up like this!
Last night I fell asleep with a lot of things on top of me. That is: not just a duvet, or a phone, or the residue of a very dry croissant eaten late at night, leaving a confetti of flakey crumbs on my white linen sheets. That too, but also this book, a heavy one, open and parted at the middle, like a small mountain sitting on my leg, weighing me down, which is nice, on a morning in bed after a late night, when you want excuses not to get up.
Picked up the book sometime last night, after the party, after deciding it was already too late to be just night, it was already light, it was already day, and I couldn’t sleep, or so I told myself, getting this brick of a book down from the shelf, getting comfortable in bed, only to open the book and settle it comfortable on my knee, like a little mountain, and think about this little mountain, what kind of mountain it was, why I liked this mountain. Then dreams.
I woke up like this! 1040 pages, I count, not by reading, but by peaking at the page number on the final page, that being the final page of words before the blank pages I don’t know the purpose of. But they are there as well, weighing me down as well, and I wonder if the words weigh me down too, millions of words I haven’t read, but still know, from flickering through the pages, doing so really quickly, and listening to that nice little sound of flipping through the pages, and feeling the light breeze of a thousand pages turning in a quick succession. Like a miniature fan, and that soft breeze on my face, that you want, in bed, in the morning, that is now the afternoon, after a party, not wanting to think but also wanting something to cover up the sound of discomfort inside your head, that isn’t exactly loud but needs to be covered up anyway, so you listen to the sounds of pages turning, and you listen to the sounds outside the window.
Outside the window, afternoon airplanes in the sky. Outside the window, birds quarrelling in the fig tree. Outside the window, Lana del Rey’s voice on someone’s phone speaker, played on repeat, just Venice Bitch over and over as if that was really funny, but Lana once lived here, in this city, it is said, kind of, and if you google her name and the name of this city, it will tell you that this city is her happy place, meaning Glasgow, not Venice, and by Venice, I don’t mean the beach, but the city, the biennale, not that Venice is a biennale, it exists all year, every year, at least for a few more years, and when it no longer does, deep under sea level, all the art have been transported to another Venice, so I’m sure this world can hold more than one Venice, it already does. Venice is fifty cities, a writer once said, and the Venices merge into one another, just like Art Basel Miami is not in Basel and doesn’t really have anything to do with Basel other than the fact that there is also an Art Basel in Basel, but there is also one in Hong Kong and even one in Paris. Soon, there will also be one in Doha. All these cities, with their Basels, cities that could just as well be called Art. Or Venice. I guess, from bed, with my mountain in my lap, everywhere and nowhere at once.
This is a very thick book that is asking not to be read, only to be placed on your knee, like a mountain, and you can look at the book and think of the book and pronounce the writer’s name to yourself the way one imagine pronouncing it to other people at the party, last night, if it had come up in conversation, which it didn’t, which is good, because you haven’t read the book, even now you aren’t reading the book, and after all it’s just a thing to weigh you down, which is nice when you are a bit sleepy in the afternoon. Quite nice, this way. Keeping it this way.
– Emma Aars, September 2025
Photo credit: Lea Stuedahl