Drawing and textile works informed by traditional knotworks and illuminated manuscripts with knotwork as minituous symbolic pieces, were exhibited alongside video of a burning candle, looped as an eternal flame on an iPad, as a contingency between ancient times and the present. 

Knotwork, known as macramé, a sailor`s tradition as old as the seas, was brought from the Middle East with sailors to Europe, where it became a trendy activity in the courthouses of the royals in the 16th Century. For the monks illuminating manuscripts under early Christianity, the geometry of the square symbolizes the creation of the manifold universe, and it was important to them to contemplate how the Two - the infinite and the finite, indeed all opposites- could be engendered by the One: the passage from One to Two must have been a reference of the symbol associated with «Divine Inscrutability» and the epitome of wisdom, King Solomon. 

"For example, the way in which the square, primary, and it`s centre secondary, provide the coordinates for the division of the sides of the square, tertiary, may have been seen by early monks as a symbol of tri-unity, three in one. The single square, 1x1 primary, spontaneously and simultaneously contains a centre point, yet the square is a unity, and the centre 1x1 secondary, is equally one in principle with the square: they are as inseparable as the circle and its centre. The centre and the periphery of the square are further related by the third, the tertiary unit, the cross which passes through the centre, the arms of which divides the sides of the square. So the wholeness of the unity is acted upon from within itself by the action of its own centre, one divided by one, resulting in one. TThe passage from One To Two is symbolized by the grid: 1x1 primary, secondary, tertiary= 2x2.”

Thanks: NoPlace, Petter Buhagen
Photos: Øystein Thorvaldsen