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Breathing Sea Water Exhibition by Sissel Johansen and Damien Fragnon
Dates: 13.9 - 18.10
Opening, Saturday 13.9 from 16-19
Breathing Sea Water presents works by Sissel Johansen and Damien Fragnon—two material, process-based artists working in the space between control and chance, introspection and experimentation.
Johansen's textile works emerge from fluid processes where reactive dyes flow across fabric in gestures that mirror the body's own fluid systems. Her layered processes of addition and subtraction reveal what she calls "hidden realities"—the unseen forces that shape both our external environments and internal landscapes. Through the material's own agency and through more intentional techniques such as painting and drawing, her large-scale works become maps of consciousness, body memories made visible through the interaction of fibre and dye.
Fragnon's ceramic practice centres on what he calls "eco-repair"—creating works that actively nourish and restore the ecosystems they encounter. He places his sculptures both temporarily and permanently in natural environments such as seas and forests. Working with clays and minerals sourced from specific biotopes, Fragnon crafts ceramics whose glazes contain elements essential to life: cobalt-rich blues that provide vitamin B12 for sea anemones, magnesium-laden whites that help sea urchins produce protective spines and defend against UV radiation; or those that can feed plants such as wild teasel in the forest. For the presentation at Kiosken, each of the ceramic pieces presented has a twin that has been placed in a chosen natural habitat where symbiosis takes place, in a search to counteract the artificialization of the world we live in.
This shared methodology is used in very different ways by each of the artists. Where Johansen's work is more introspective and looks into the body, the hidden histories within us—consciousness, memory, the psyche's invisible currents—Fragnon tends to non-human life around us, the stones that protect us and the minerals that feed the earth's memory.
Sissel Johansen (b. 1974 in Bergen) grew up in Nordmøre and Trøndelag, and lives and works in Oslo. She has a bachelor's degree in material-based art from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and a master's degree in fine art from the Art Academy in Bergen. She works mainly with textiles, painting and drawing. She has shown work at Bærum Kunsthall, Galleri Salhus and the art lounge at Nitja Center for Contemporary Art, among others. In 2025 she received the Norwegian Association for Craft Artists' Student Prize in Bergen.
Damien Fragnon (b. Clermont-Ferrand) lives and works in Sète. He graduated from ESAAA (Annecy Alpes) in 2015 and has exhibited widely across Europe and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Galerie Ceysson & Bénétière in Saint-Étienne, Chapelle XIV and Villa Radet in Paris, and presentations in Amsterdam, Bangkok, and Mexico. In 2024, he was awarded the Grand Prix de la Céramique Européenne in Brussels. He is currently resident at the Cité des Arts in partnership with the Académie des Beaux-Arts (2024-2025) and had his first European solo show at Céramic Brussels in 2025.
Kiosken is generously supported by Bergen Kommune, Norsk Kulturrådet, Vestland Fylkeskommune, and Norske Kunsthåndverkere.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Kiosken, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
