City: Between us

Between us

Jennifer Aldred and Renata Ottati

15 - 24 August 2025

Royal Flush, Kunstnernes Hus

Wergelandssveien 17

Oslo, Norway

Text By Emma Aars

BE MINE

ALWAYS

CUDDLE ME

Everything is always BREAKING.

Breaking news breaking glass breaking hearts. Love hearts all scattered around my bag, dirty, and there they wait for someone, grey and illegible and my phone tastes of powdered candy every time I ... kiss it? I don’t kiss my phone a lot but I kiss through it. Write kisses, blow kisses, schedule kisses, see you next week xx. Xx all the time but mostly as a placeholder for thoughts I’m not yet ready to complete. Lots of thoughts never completed. It’s late. And I’m a writer. Well I believe that xxx so maybe we should xxx. I like xx because xx says so. Blowing kisses instead of thinking sounds like a good idea when you’re at an opening or at a party — the brain equally defunct. Staring at people and forgetting what you wanted to say. Jen makes art about xxx. Renata was born in xx. She is interested in xxx.

Things I should remember because they are my friends: Bottles? Lilacs? Lovers? That thing that comes after fun? It’s my third nectarine today. Or technically not, because it’s four in the morning. A friend just called me to say she wants to cancel her birthday. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself for those hours on a Saturday turning into a Sunday. Look out the window. Windy trees. I follow Scottish winds as they hit Norway, blowing the walnuts of their branches, all green and unripe. A moist nectarine kernel in my one hand, a phone in the other. Hands full. Ripeness: getting there. Somebody shouting into my ear, whispering: Last night i dreamt Two ravens singing Their hearts out.

Her WhatsApp picture is a kiss, lipstick on the door in the bathroom. I know where it is, a door full of kisses, different shades of metallic reds, browns, purples. The unexpected shades of our lips, contextualising our bodies via names such as LUST and IT GIRL and ROTHKO. I know so because I worked with that kinda stuff. Sorting out lipsticks selling lipsticks trying on lipsticks but only on my hand, stripes of reds, but never using lipsticks myself. Didn’t suit me. It does look like I wear lipstick on the days after drinking, but I could never have kissed that bathroom door, never. It wouldn’t show.

Late nights are kinda mornings. They are their own kind of time, filled with too much and very little. Talking about god, talking about magazines, talking about the sticker stuck on the red sole of Addison Rae’s shoes. The clean very square very red void left where her sticker once was, before it was removed. Until she — someone — finally peeled it off. The desire to peel off a sticker late at night, early in the morning, like peeling the label off a beer bottle as conversation turns increasingly boring. But the red mark, like a new start. Outside the window, it’s getting light out. Outside the window, some people are going to work. Outside the window, the sound of crowds cheering somewhere in the distance. What does it mean? What is the meaning of it all? Good jeans. Pop songs. Pain killers xxxx

Installation view, Between us, Jennifer Aldred and Renata Ottati, Royal Flush, Kunstners Haus, Oslo, 2025

Tinted Windows, Between us, Jennifer Aldred, Royal Flush, Kunstners Haus, Oslo, 2025

Empty Machines #4 and Empty Machines #17 , Renata Ottait, Royal Flush, Kunstners Haus, Oslo, 2025

Tinted Windows, Between us, Jennifer Aldred, Royal Flush, Kunstners Haus, Oslo, 2025

Tinted Windows (detail), Between us, Jennifer Aldred, Royal Flush, Kunstners Haus, Oslo, 2025

Empty Machines #4, Renata Ottait, Royal Flush, Kunstners Haus, Oslo, 2025

Empty Machines #17, Renata Ottati, Royal Flush, Kunstners Haus, Oslo, 2025

photo credit: Lea Stuedahl

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