The artist Marius Martinussen has just finished painting the Kjell Henriksen Observatory. The artist was inspired by the upside-down perspective the aurora scientists have on the atmosphere. On Saturday the public can visit the observatory and take a look on the artist’s and the scientists’ perspective.

Text: Eva Therese Jenssen

Marius Martinussen has spent a week on the Breinosa Mountain. The 30-year old artist received the commission to decorate the aurora station Kjell Henriksen Observatory (KHO) from Public Art Norway (KORO).

The commission represents new experiences in the artist’s career: first time in Svalbard – and the first time he has had to have rifle training in order to be allowed to paint!
– It felt like I was holding the rifle in one hand and the paint brush in the other while I was working, he says.

Marius Martinussen spent an intensive week painting at the Aurora observatory. (Photo: Eva Therese Jenssen).

Despite his age, Martinussen has had several commissions and solo shows before getting the KHO commission. He works in paint, but combines several medias, such as graffiti, web design, architecture, music and cartoons – to name some. The visual landscape is his main concern.

- I am interested in the languages represented in painting and I try to combine different dialects in my work and to create untraditional combinations, he explains.

A roadmap for navigation
The hallway in the aurora observatory presented a challenge.

- I was prepared for a 10 m long hallway but was met with a 50 m long corridor, which presented some challenges in how to organize the work, Martinussen says.

In addition to the long corridor walls, there were technical prescriptions he had to follow: he could only paint on the highest part of the walls, and keep above 1.40 m as technical equipment is frequently transported along the hallway.

A roadmap for navigation - of sorts. (Photo: Marius Martinussen).

The paintings present small individual stories and the artist recommend people to read the wall art as a cartoon strip.

– The corridor is long and white, and a place to go through to get somewhere else – so I set out to make a new “roadmap” for navigation, so to speak, he explains.

– The most important thing is not what I intended it to look like, but how the spectator “reads” the art, Martinussen says.

He compares it with sitting on an air plane at night and looking down through the sky at urban landscapes – and intended the art to be a complementary element to the aurora scientists that look up on the sky.

– You could call the whole process an upside-down affair, he explains.

Open Day on October 18
This coming Saturday spectators are invited up to the KHO to have a look around the world’s most modern aurora observatory including the new artwork. This event is part of the annual “Open Day” that the research organizations in the Svalbard Science Centre organize. The program for the Open day 2008 is found here.

Some of Martinussen's work in the KHO hallway. (Photo: Marius Martinussen).