Bård Breivik's Score for a Longer Conversation

Spread about the studio are several of Breivik's own works. Some hang on the walls, others stand on tables and boxes or lie on the floor. Most are new and belong to the project Score for a Longer Conversation (Partitur for en lengre samtale); for these are the objects that will be exhibited in Helsinki in May. Here we find objects finished in red and black Chinese lacquer, or made of oxidised bronze or laminated wood. These slender, elongated elements of Breivik's "score" resonate with a faint echo of the cicadas in the drawer.

It was in the early 1980s that Breivik began working on the series of objects that eventually resulted in Score for a Longer Conversation. This was not the first time he had produced series of objects. In The Oars Series (Åreserien), which he worked on in the late 1970s, his point of departure was a tangible utilitarian object. A rowing paddle of standard dimensions served as model for a number of variants made of different materials. In his subsequent work he sought to find a form that was more abstract and "archetypal" in nature. What he eventually settled on was something resembling a small shell or the hull of a boat. This basic form has proved an inexhaustible source for Breivik. He has returned to it again and again. It crops up in ever new variations, rendered in a vast range of materials and techniques from various parts of the world. All in all the series encompasses some three to four hundred objects created over a twenty-year period.

Variations on a theme

When Malmö Konsthall mounted what has so far been the biggest retrospective of Breivik's work, they exhibited a total of 88 Score objects from the years 1986-96. Among them were objects made of bamboo, birch root, bark, Brazilian liana, bronze, copper, zinc and pressed steel painted with car enamel, to mention just a few - alongside more unusual and sophisticated combinations of materials such as mahogany/mother of pearl/lacquer or pressed steel/lacquer and eggshell.

One of the most fascinating things about the Score objects is this wealth of variation. Even though they are all based on a single model, the finished objects are highly individual. Just like the cicadas, each has its own unique personality. The artist's latest black and red lacquered objects, for example, are closed and compact in shape. The black ones have curved backs but flatten out towards their extremities, ending in duck-bill forms. They are reminiscent of elongated, stylised cars, or the deformed foetuses of some double-beaked creature. By contrast, the oxidised bronze objects are open and fractured. These have been given the working title "sandal series", since their bronze hoops are suggestive of sandal straps. Some of them consist of rows of single "straps", in others the straps form zigzags or are interwoven in various ways.

Thus each object has its individual features while at the same time being part of one of Score's various "families". Together they constitute series within series. Objects made of one and the same substance can be said to form core families, yet they also have cross links in terms of other properties such as form, colour, mode of construction and surface treatment. In this respect as well Score reminds us of the cicada collection.

Setting a standard

The Score objects are not just based on a single form, they are also almost identical in length: 1.2 metres. Dimensions are always significant in Breivik's work. He generally adopts a set of dimensions - a format - in advance as a limitation within which to work. In a sense he imposes on himself an "academic" standard. Over the years he has worked with a wide range of such formats. Whereas the boxes he created in the 1970s were full of small, almost jewel-like objects, many of his later diabase sculptures are enormous in size.

When Breivik began work on the slender hull shapes, his plan was to make them man-sized, in other words, 1.8 metres in height, but this format did not function as intended and he increased the size to 2.1 metres. Later on, however, he wished to work on a smaller scale and reduced the length to a quarter of what it had been. It was a series of these roughly half-metre-long objects that were first exhibited under the title of Score for a Longer Conversation. The occasion was the 1984 exhibition "Art Now" in Toyama, Japan. Today that series of smaller objects bears the name The Small Score (Det lille partituret).

In 1986, in connection with the exhibition "After Nature" at the Germans van Eck gallery in New York, he changed the format once again, this time to 1.2 metres. It is the objects of this size that make up the Score for a Longer Conversation such as it is today. This size proved to have a number of advantages. Not least, it was easy to handle. He could carry an object under his arm, or in the boot of a car or taxi. This greatly reduced the need for specialised transport, a fact highly conducive to Breivik's flexible way of working. In 1987, when he travelled around the world, he could even take his object models with him in his backpack - each divided into two pieces 60 cm in length.

We relate to things in the world on the basis of our own bodily dimensions. Breivik's changes between different formats represent an investigation into the significance of size for a thing's character, and for the way we perceive it. He himself describes the 1.2 metre Score objects as a little too big to be objects and just a little too small to be sculptures. For their own part, the objects of The Small Score are closer to the realm of handcraft. The same is true of the most recent objects of 60 cm in length, which Breivik presents for the first time in this exhibition at the Galleri Anhava. These new objects use the same basic form as the other Score objects, thus creating an interaction between the various dimensions in the exhibition.

A musical score

The way Score is displayed varies from one exhibition to another, depending partly on the nature of the venue and the number of objects to be shown. In Toyama the disposition of the work suggested direct associations with a musical score. Some of the objects were mounted on one wall in two rows one above the other, while the remainder were arranged on the floor in two rows in front of the wall. Each row was thereby reminiscent of a single part in a score, with each object equivalent to a note on the stave. The objects varied in character, some being heavy, others light, some pale in colour, others dark. The distances between the objects also varied, helping to give the work a fine rhythmical quality.

In Malmö the objects were mounted one after the other, as in a long frieze. In one sense Score resembles a Minimalist series composed of numerous identical objects, in another it has little at all in common with Minimalism's ideal of mechanical production and the resulting "pure" forms, which are intended to have no reference beyond themselves. The objects of Score are full of references, and it is one of their obvious features that they display a range of fabrication methods. Moreover, repetition has a very different quality in Breivik's work. Although his starting point is always a single basic form, that form is subjected to endless variation, so that it is not "the same thing" that is repeated, but always something "different". Despite its relatively strict premise, this gives Score a quality of richness and abundance. But although Breivik's objects differ from one another, this does not mean that each is equally effective in its own right. Many of them are powerful and independent in character, while others can be compared to commas or filler words such as "er" and "um", yet still the latter are needed for the work to function as a whole.

In its basic character, Score is an open-ended work. It will never be finished. Some of the objects are sold and depart into the wider world, whereas others are forever being added. Each time some part of the work is exhibited, new constellations and "conversations" arise between its various elements. But the conversation is pursued not just among the objects that are at any one time on display. One can also imagine a longer conversation involving all the Score objects, both those that are still in the possession of the artist and all the others that are now in museums or owned by private individuals around the world.

Conversations

On closer acquaintance we discover that Score for a Longer Conversation is about not just one longer conversation, but a range of extended conversations pursued in parallel. The conversational dimension is, for example, an important aspect of the object production as such. When Breivik travelled round the world in 1987, one of his aims was to study local craft traditions in the places he visited. A number of the Score objects were accordingly created in collaboration with local craftsmen. Basing their work on Breivik's models, they have produced objects using their own craft techniques. One example of this approach is Breivik's collaboration with Sugimoto, a Japanese roof tiler from a professional dynasty that stretches back more than twenty generations. Sugimoto's roof tiling technique is used on temple rooves and is very time consuming. Tiny pieces of bark are put together in several layers so as to form a thick water-repellent covering. In recent years Breivik has cultivated an extensive collaboration with Chinese craftsmen. Both the lacquered objects and many of the bronzes in this exhibition were made in China.

In addition to the often wordless "conversations" between the artist and the craftsmen, we also find a kind of dialogue within each of the separate works. In the abovementioned example there is a dialogue between a traditional and a newer form of handcraft. The use of resources and knowledge represented by various craft traditions around the world has been one of the central ideas behind Score.

Yet Score encompasses not just objects made using traditional materials and techniques. Many employ modern materials such as steel. This vast scope ranging from the traditional to the modern is also present in the work's basic form, the boat-like hull, which contains a reference to a constructional tradition that has been practised in all corners of the world since time immemorial, yet which has never become outdated. The Score objects carry within them this reference to everything from the simple dugout to the modern aircraft fuselage. The conversation that Score initiates can therefore also be described as one about time and history.

Furthermore, this latter aspect demonstrates that Score for a Longer Conversation is engaged in a dialogue with Breivik's own earlier works. One such work is History I of 1974, which consists of a flat, leather-lined box with a lid. Inside the box lie pieces of flint, worked pieces of iron and highly polished steel rods. The objects are sorted according to material, with each group consisting of twelve (4x3) items neatly ordered into serried rows. Breivik's arrangement is reminiscent of museum displays of archeological finds. The various materials - flint, iron and steel - seem to correspond to the archeologist's categorisation of artefacts according to stone, iron and bronze ages, with the difference that Breivik includes one material that represents our own age.

In contrast to the small objects in the box, those of Score have not been given a fixed arrangement. And although they too take up the theme of time and history, they do not define a clear sequence of development. But much like the objects in History I, the Score objects collectively amount to a collection, despite the fact that the objects are not all gathered together in a single place. Work on Score has the character of a collector's project, with the constituent objects amounting to a kind of archive covering a wealth of different materials and techniques, stories and references. Thinking back to the cicada collection in Breivik's studio, Score could, as the artist himself has suggested, perhaps be described as a cultural insect collection.