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THE RJUKAN SUN MIRROR

Since it was completed in 2013, the Rjukan Sun Mirror has generated more international attention than any other Norwegian contemporary art produced throughout the last decades. 

The Sun Mirror in Rjukan is also the world's only contemporary art project that is on its way to UNESCO's world heritage list, and the only KORO project that has had NASA inspected. NASA came to learn about the computer systems that control the mirrors, which follow the sun's orbits over Rjukan. After religious motifs lost their position in what we know as the currents of art history, it can be argued that the sun, the life-giving power we have everything to thank for, should be among the most important motifs - or perhaps the most important motif, for people make art about.

 

Nevertheless, there are not often large ambitious art projects of the sun appearing in the field of contemporary art. In an international contemporary context, there is Olafur Eliasson's `Weather Project`` on Tate from 2003 and James Turrell's `skyscape` installations. In the Norwegian context, one may have to return to Munch's monumental mural in the University's Aula (1913) to find great solar art? Until an artist in Rjukan just after the turn of the millennium embarked on a painstaking and thorough process to realize an idea as old as the city itself: to set up a sun mirror over the shadow valley. The popular tourist attraction Solspeilet is also concept art at a high level. Solspeilet thus pushes all boundaries for what is normal for Norwegian contemporary art, and all contemporary art that comes to Rjukan after 2013 will be seen in the light of the Sun Mirror. When we begin planning and programming exhibitions at RJUKAN CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART during 2021, the unique sun mirror project - which grew out of the collaboration between Martin Andersen and Tinn Municipality, will gradually be clearly anchored where it belongs: In the absolute core of the international contemporary art field.

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