Kåre Aleksander Grundvåg
Grunnarbeid (Earthworks), 2021

First shown in 2021 at Entrée in Bergen, Kåre Aleksander Grundvåg’s Grunnarbeid (Earthworks) are sculptures 3D-printed using a mixture of soil and clay. The sculptures act as small biotopes, allowing local species of moss, algae, and other vegetation to take hold and slowly transform their surfaces over time. Since first exhibited, the works have been stored and transported in transparent boxes, growing and changing within family homes and friends’ studios. At some point, the sculptures will be allowed to dry out completely. At that point, they may be raku fired and buried at the original soil sample sites, deposited as small markers for future archaeologists.

Grundvåg’s project combines digital fabrication with the hand-processing of local soils collected from places shaped extensively by human activity — urban developments, infrastructure projects, and sites of erosion. In each case, the soils have been recently exposed, whether by direct human intervention or by an unforeseen ‘natural’ event, such as a flood or the uprooting of a tree. For each new iteration of the Grunnarbeid, Grundvåg reuses and recombines soils from earlier phases of production; for the artist, the removal and recombination of soils is a key aspect of a much longer history of human intervention in natural ecosystems for architectural, extractive, infrastructural, and agricultural purposes — of the reorganisation of the ground itself in the name of developing human society at large.