WHO : Curator, shopowner & designer Tone Dalen
WHERE: Grünerløkka, Oslo

ITALY-CRUSH
On our second meeting, I realized that this was not her daytime job. At that time she spent her days on various film sets as a set designer. Naturally, given she’d spent most of her childhood in the Norwegian countryside sitting wide-eyed in front of Fellini's canvas, seduced by his divine representation of time and space. His beautiful and conscious cinematography and scenography brought her to Italy before she had done anything else in what she’s dubbed her perpetual 'almost-adult-life'.

NOT CONVINCED
Our third meeting took place a few years later, when she was having a housewarming do in her new, yet old apartment in the older part of Oslo, Grünerløkka.

Coming in through her then, petroleum blue front door, was like gaining access to a party in a foreign city, possibly Paris though probably not in London. Amsterdam more likely or even Rotterdam. It was a late summer evening and the rooms were filled with artists and other creatives, women in their boho-chic best, and men who greeted me with foreign manners. I asked if Tone would one day let me photograph her exotic apartment. The hostess was certainly not convinced.

HIGH ART ON CRUISE LINE SHIPS
Tone now operates somewhere between an art dealer, a curator, interior designer and a passionate citizen engaging in the preservation of public spaces and historic buildings in the heart of Oslo. Over the years she’s been responsible for curating and developing site-specific art-projects on various international cruise lines. You wouldn’t expect to find high art aboard some of the most glamorous ships in the world, given that those traveling in this manner are not the one’s you’d think to be the most avid lovers of contemporary art. Having never undertaken such a voyage personally however, I’m told I’m way off. On the other hand, Tone has also been responsible for the renovation of Klosterkroa at Hovedøya and the interior design of Vega Scene in Oslo.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTERIOR
Well inside the door of Tone’s eclectic apartment again, after having received a definitive yes to photograph her home a few years later, I found that same sense of other-worldly cool. It is as if Tone has decorated in images. With a mix of the poetic and strange, she’s created small still lifes which seem to move from here to there, as the light travels around the room. And yet, she’s done nothing here except fill the place with herself, her things and her art. Not a single square meter has been designed, constructed or refurbished. Things have been placed intuitively as they’ve been accumulated, found, received as gifts or made by herself.

'For me the fun of owning your own apartment is that you can make as many holes as you like in the walls,..'. Tone says that, in summer, when the light fills the apartment nearly all of the time, she removes the visual white noise. However, when autumn has made its arrival and the long period of Nordic darkness is a fact, she wallpapers the walls with pictures again, mixing new purchases with earlier work ... For each season, she makes a new exhibition in her own private gallery at St. Paul’s Place ...

DISCREET BUT INTENSE AFTERTASTE
Tone serves dark chocolate on a gold plated dish, and brings out the computer to view some installation shots from a project she has been responsible for, onboard one of the most luxurious hybrid this writer has seen. 'soaring fighter jets adorned with frescoes by Antonio Riello would be impossible not to notice as one gets ready for an evening of gourmet food and wine onboard one of these ships.’ And this gets right to the heart of what Tone is all about; ‘to challenge the way we look at the world and create an awareness about the way we look at images’.

Even the coffee she serves gives her away as devout and passionate when it comes to art. Intense and confronting while at the same time tasty and rich. And last but not least, a discreet and distinct aftertaste.

ART DOES MATTER!
'Living with art is an enrichment for me.' Either because it’s simply beautiful to look at, or because it makes me reflect on the true nature of what’s really being told. Being exposed to art, be it in the public sphere, at work or at home does something to us. Even though I’ve been working with this for years now, I’m not jaded. I can still react emotionally to certain works of art.

Which must mean that the Tone Dalen still regards her work as something important, something which truly affects others. 'Perhaps the effects or consequences of looking at or engaging with art are not immediate or direct. How important then to be confronted with the gaze of others and their respective takes on what we all think we share, be it in the workplace, out in public or safely nestled at home.

THIS, was what I wrote last time I visited Tone, and photographed her apartment for Elle Decoration. Since then, she has also become a shopowner, and runs INVENTARIUM-In the heart of Grünerløkka. There, in the smallest but most charming shopfront, they display Contemporary Art alongside an eclectic mix of Vintage and Retro treasures: furniture , lamps, midcentury glass and ceramics. Added to this, she is deeply engaged in the visuals of our public meeting spaces,- lately as one of the many -in the deeply rooted movement trying to save Y-block in Oslo, from demolition. The iconic Y-Block in Oslo’s government quarter by Architect Erling Viksjø, is seen as a symbol of social democracy and bears integrated murals by Pablo Picasso made in cooperation with Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar. It’s scheduled for demolition to make way for the new government quarter, and the murals due to be moved elsewhere.

Now-It is as if all of Tone’s hobbies, her work, her experience as a professional within the arts, her passions, her accumulated objects of desire, bric a brac and pices of art have all merged into her newest project- in the shape or form of a gallery and shop physically present in the cityscape and soon-because of todays situation, also to be near you in an online shopfront. The inventory list of her life...

for further reading:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/arts/oslo-picasso-mural.html

You can find Tone here:

http://tonedalen.no/
On instagram: @inventarium

WORDS & PHOTOS: Elisabeth Aarhus

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