A wide window. More precisely – Kim Hiorthøy

There are people, who are called “human orches­tras”. Precisely because they are almost identical to an orches­tra or at least to a part of it. Surely, such descrip­tion in most cases is applic­able to musi­cians, more pre­cisely – to those, who play a not small amount of instru­ments at once. Here it’s also an orches­tra, just the instru­ments are dif­fer­ent. And the com­bin­a­tion of them in one per­son could com­pete even with vari­ety of colours spectrum.

The dir­ec­tion after the men­tioned orches­tra – Norway, Oslo. Following this dir­ec­tion and know­ing already men­tioned “orches­tral” goal we will find Kim Hiorthøy, who, with his con­tri­bu­tion, occu­pies music, graphic design, cine­ma­to­graphy, even lit­er­at­ure. And this is just what is pub­lished offi­cially and known for the wish­ful ones. The suc­cess in the men­tioned fields pro­voked such char­ac­ter­iz­a­tions as „Norwegian wun­der­kind“ or „one of the most cre­at­ive people in Norway“. Possibly not without a reason? This time, for dis­cus­sion, we have two from the four: elec­tron­ics and graph­ics by Kim Hiorthøy.

While study­ing music in Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Kim‘s interest was focused on graphic design. Work with fan­zine pub­lish­ing and typo­graphy of local groups‘ entries began. One of the bet­ter known pro­jects in his bio­graphy – col­lab­or­a­tion with a pub­lish­ing com­pany “Rune Grammofon” and a rock band Motorpsycho. His other works include interior dec­or­a­tions and even a cinema theater poster. By the way, Kim is also inter­ested in illus­tra­tion and not just any kind but for chil­dren books. At the moment, if he wanted, he could brag about more than fif­teen pub­lic­a­tions, in which his graph­ical con­tri­bu­tion is imprin­ted. It’s a shame but I didn’t have a chance to see the last illus­tra­tions. Knowing that Norway is a coun­try of non – con­ser­vat­ive chil­dren, we can expect oddity. With no link­ing to Kim Hiorthøy – just think,what worth is a book about defec­a­tion with vivid illustrations.

However, this Norwegian is strictly Norwegian. This phras­ing came to me after see­ing his geo­met­rical, refined and quite min­im­al­istic pieces for the first time. Well and stably calm, even when the col­ors are bright. I am not apply­ing this to the major­ity of the port­fo­lio but, prob­ably, the north­ern make – up leaves its imprint whether it’s col­or­ful fig­ures or col­lages of grainy pho­tos. And now he is under an Oslo’s gallery’s STANDARD pro­tect­ive wing, which rep­res­ents con­tem­por­ary Norwegian visual art artists. He organ­ized four per­sonal exhib­i­tions, even more col­lect­ive ones.

When eval­u­at­ing Kim Hiorthøy as a musi­cian a gap opens up, let­ting only sub­ject­ively fore­see and expect the indis­tinct­ive. This music does not simply fit in the word elec­tron­ics. When in artist’s MySpace web­site it’s intro­duced with a mys­tical “melo­dra­matic pop­u­lar song” term, else­where it’s not dis­pens­able without impress­ive and allegedly uni­ver­sal­ity mean­ing descrip­tions, for example, “lo – fi/​leftfield elec­tron­ics, field record­ings, elec­tro – acous­tic sounds” etc. Possibly, if shortened – an entirety of syn­thetic, quite strange and maybe even min­im­al­istic sounds and, surely, not far behind from Kim’s graph­ics’ par­tic­u­lar Norwegian fla­vor. In 2001 this music attrac­ted the atten­tion of “Smalltown Supersound” com­pany. This way the first album “Hei” emerged and a couple of oth­ers, not men­tion­ing EP or vinyl records and with that – a cer­tain inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion followed.

I regard them as very dif­fer­ent things, even though the place in my head that decides if some­thing works or not is the same for both (and I guess for any­thing, in a way). – Kim about the cre­at­ing pro­cesses of graphic design and music.

Nevertheless, the pro­cesses often tend to exchange with one another. This way they com­ple­ment each other with use­ful and fresh ideas. So, when facing a the­or­et­ical dilemma “the know­ledge of one field or the pri­or­it­ies ver­sat­il­ity?”, a large list of ver­sions come up. Limitedly but almost per­fectly or widely tak­ing a ser­i­ous bite of each? Which sounds bet­ter, an orches­tra or solo? Let’s leave this ques­tion with widely opened win­dows for every­one to think. With Kim Hiorthøy and in a part maybe not abund­antly known Norwegian art.

About author:

Kristina Alijošiūtė
Kristina Alijošiūtė is Art Pit’s editor and blogger, also contributing in design solutions. She mostly focuses on quality and freshness of topics, but also values motivated irony and ability to stand out. Writing was always more a pleasure than an obligation to her. She also respects those who are not afraid to write subjectively. Kristina ... Read further >