23–26 April, 2026
Galleri Riis at Market Art Fair
Stockholm, Sweden
For Market Art Fair 2026, Galleri Riis will present a two-person exhibition featuring Marte Johnslien (b. 1977, Lillehammer, Norway) and Lisa Tan (b. 1973, Syracuse, USA). We are presenting four sculptures by Marte Johnslien from her project Gaea Norvegica, a series of sculptures made from glazed ceramic and compressed scrap metal, relating to her artistic research project TiO2, in dialogue with two large fine art digital print diptychs and wallpaper by Lisa Tan from her ongoing Dictionary series. A poetic exploration of picture and language in Tan’s dictionary works meets alchemical symbols and material investigations in Marte Johnslien’s sculptures.
Marte Johnslien‘s Gaea Norvegica
In alchemy, it is said that all substances contain seeds of their own opposites, that there is a cosmic connection in that the whitest white can be found in the blackest stone in the darkest earth. In 1910, a man patents the production method for a white pigment with what appears to have endless potential; titanium dioxide, capable of covering all other pigments, making everything shine, a promise of a brighter world. In a series of works composed from glazed ceramic and compressed scrap metal, ”Gaea Norvegica” from 2023-2026, Marte Johnslien explores and shapes the history and potential of titanium dioxide. The title is a nod to the scientist Keilhaus’ book, known as the first geological survey of Norway. Johnslien explores the aesthetic potential of materials and substances from the titanium dioxide industry, such as iron sulphate and harvested local clays, by making them react chemically and spatially in new sculptural constellations.
The history of Norwegian soil is the story of mysterious minerals, seductive rock walls and the rise of a nation. But it is also the story of transforming it in the pursuit of profit, of extracting and refining, of the invention of a small pigment that changed the color of an entire world. In her work, material crystallizes, melts and crawls out and over itself, becomes familiar with itself in new forms, meets in its own possibilities. Digging, hammering, searching, Johnslien challenges established ideas, and forms new connections between the potential of a material, a young nation’s industrial adventure, mythology, chemistry and power.
Lisa Tan’s The Dictionary Series
The Swedish Language in the Dictionary, 2026
The Norwegian Language in the Dictionary, 2025
“Is a lexicon a thing of universal objectivity or a specific claim to collective political subjectivity?”
Lisa Tan ponders this question in an ongoing series of works in which she gathers all of the words in a dictionary, in which definitions are supplemented by an illustration or image. She has so far dissected the English, Basque and the Norwegian dictionaries. Tan reproduces these images in diptych format: one print collects and then renders them as silhouettes labeled with the term they are meant to help explain, while the other print shows the pictures but redacts the words.
In the case of the Norwegian language, the dictionary’s editors estimate that over 1000 words in total—certain tools, ships and objects related to war need help, a supplement. In doing so, they reflect a language culture’s particular concerns and values, inadvertently (or not) speaking about the cultural preoccupations and history of Norway. The presentation at Market Art Fair will debut a new diptych in this series, The Swedish Language in the Dictionary.
“Transforming the empirical into the poetic and the poetic into the political”
The prints are framed and hung on an expanse of wallpaper, which is populated with all the illustrations found in the English language dictionary. On the wallpaper, there is no language, only pictures. A woman’s head in profile wearing an academic tasseled cap drawn in a graphic style popular in the 1950s; a Chinese Buddhist pagoda drafted frontally and from a distance, like the icon of a building; a sea horse pictured from the side so that its anatomy is clearly traceable. What any viewer confronts, is the hegemonic English language, for better or worse, as a backdrop upon which all other languages hang.
Photo credit:
Jean-Baptiste Béranger