Imagine walking through the forest. Along the path you notice a series of abandoned objects. You see two wooden sticks tied together in a cross with a piece of string. You see a small metal tube, a red toy car, and a tiny plastic animal. You continue and come across a fragment of a concrete cylinder and a coil of colorful electrical wires. On the ground you spot a worn-out mattress. It has taken on brownish hues after lying outside for a long time. Its fibers are beginning to disintegrate, forming a torn, chaotic surface. There are no people in sight, and although some of the objects are recognizable, they seem to belong to a past—or perhaps, paradoxically, a future.

This imagined post-apocalyptic scene is an attempt to describe Jørund Aase’s production. His artistic practice is surrounded by a kind of ambivalence, where the materials he uses seem to come from a future in which they have become remnants of a collapsed civilization. Nature is slowly reclaiming the terrain, while abandoned objects find their place in an unexpected symbiosis. Aase is preoccupied with the idea that we live at the edge of something new, a time that demands preparedness—of materials, food, and water. For many of us, this has become part of everyday life: water containers have been purchased, batteries and camping stoves stand ready in the basement. Aase, however, has taken this further. He has turned preparedness into a lived practice. This is reflected not least in the way he cultivates the soil where he lives with self-sufficiency in mind.