On the Work of Øyvind Bast
By Igory Mansotti
There’s an odor of something Semperian here—Gottfried Semper, the 19th-century theorist who argued that ornament didn’t follow architecture but preceded it, born of weaving, knotting, patterning. The lineage is undeniably present. The ornamental fragment becomes structural, and the structure becomes story.
Oh my, oh my… How many times haven’t I gotten shitfaced on the porch of Bast’s summer house? Not destructively, but smoothly, suavely—at the same pace as we watched the sun dip into the horizon and come back up behind us. In between, we listened to the nightingale while the moon spilled light across the landscape. Every second marked a transition—new forms and shapes, unfolding around us, unfolding within us. Occasionally, we’d walk slowly down to the sea. Just to descend into it. A new state. A new form.
Bast works like a machine. But not machine-like. Extremely human-like—with all the error, the muscle memory, the quiet logic of intuition. It’s like that Joe Walsh quote: “It’s computers. It has nothing to do with music. It can’t drink a bottle of vodka and destroy a hotel room. It can’t throw a TV off the fifth floor into the pool and get it right in the middle. When AI knows how to destroy a hotel room, then I’ll pay attention to it.” Bast’s power to create is immense. It’s as if he’s trying to capture every split second of the constantly shifting landscape—outside of him and inside of him—translating it into stone, into plaster, into the dry, pragmatic materials of construction. We hear echoes of Alois Riegl’s Kunstwollen here—an inner will to form, driving material into becoming. Bast’s forms feel summoned by that will, that unconscious momentum.
Some sculptures sit. Others stand. Øyvind Bast’s seem to lean—into time, into weight, into memory, into architecture. There’s a kind of ornamental gravity at work here—not in the sense of décor, but in the deeper architectural sense. The way a cornice leans into a corner. The way a lullaby, whispered to a child, marks the soft hinge between wakefulness and sleep. Ornament, as Bast reminds us, is not decoration. Ornament is function. Transition. It is the architecture of change. Sitting on the porch, getting shitfaced, listening to the nightingale’s song as everything around us shifts shape. That’s ornament.
When Bast tells me that a successful sculpture gives back more space than it takes up, he’s not being poetic. Or maybe he is—but not metaphorically. His works are spatial engines. They hum. They pressurize the room. They are generous in the way Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion is generous—with its sliding marble planes and Georg Kolbe’s lone figure, placed like punctuation. Architecture makes rooms inward. Sculpture gives space outward.
Trolleys, discarded hearths, and scavenged chimneys become not just supports but protagonists. Roles shift. A Leca chunk becomes a plinth. A soapstone becomes a ledge. The line between what carries and what is carried dissolves.
Ornament here is neither surface detail nor nostalgic flourish. It is action. Warp. Weight shift. A mark of movement between states. In Bast’s hands, ornament is not applied—it emerges. Like a wave folding over sand and leaving behind the negative of a shell.
ISCA GALLERY
ISCA Gallery is an independent contemporary art gallery and project space with the goal of supporting, exhibiting and promoting Norwegian and Scandinavian artists both locally and internationally.
The gallery opened in June 2020 in the center of Oslo and features an exhibition program developed with emerging and established artists from the nordic countries and abroad.
ISCA Gallery aims to support and cultivate the art community in Oslo and bring international exposure to artists through gallery exhibitions, art fairs and collaborations.
Laetitia Queyranne
Founder and director
Meltzersgate 12
0257 Oslo
Opening Hours
Wednesday - Friday: 12.00 - 17.00
Saturday: 12.00 - 16.00
Monday - Tuesday: By appointment