Joel Billekvist (b. 1992, Sweden) lives in Oslo and has recently graduated from the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts. In 2021, he has exhibited at Podium, Kösk, Hos Arne and Coulisse gallery. In his current praxis, Billekvist is investigating how to define the front and back of a painting. Materials such as high-tech, ripstop and transparent textiles are used as an unconventional canvas. His interest in stenter frames and textiles as part of the manifestation of a painting as a physical object has emerged through projects such as Soft On Soft, where Billekvist worked with soft oil chalk on transparent netting. The permeability of the material allows the viewer to see the contours of the stenter frame like a skeleton under thin skin. The works thus challenge the boundary between front and back, interior and exterior, and transcend the two-dimensionality of painting as a medium.

Lesia Vasylchenko (born in Kyiv, Ukraine based in Oslo, Norway) works across a range of media including video, photography and installation. In her research-based practice Vasylchenko is looking into encounters between visual cultures, media technologies and chronopolitics. She is a co-curator of the artist-run gallery space Podium and a founder of STRUKTURA. Time, a cross-disciplinary initiative for research and practice within the framework of visual arts, media archaeology, literature, and philosophy. She holds a degree in Journalism from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and Fine Arts from Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Vasylchenko have been shown among others at Henie Onstad Art Center and MUNCH Museum; MUNCH Museum; Oslo Kunstforening. Her work is part of the collection of Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA / Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki, Finland.

Learn more about the artist studio program at Kunstnernes Hus