Kim Laybourn's 'The Realm of Things' at Billedkunstnerne i Oslo

Kim Laybourn's exhibition 'The Realm of Things' (2026) at Billedkunstnerne i Oslo features three large acrylic plaster reliefs, each composed of twelve panels with organic branching patterns and human-like eyes. The reliefs, titled 'portal 1-3', are framed in light wood and supported by sandbags, with condensation hinting at water's movement. The inner room shows a video where Laybourn animates scanned stones, fossils, and Stone Age tools from various museums, depicting them rolling, bouncing, and colliding. The exhibition explores non-human agency and challenges anthropocentric views, referencing Josephine Berry's book 'Planetary Realism' (Sternberg Press, 2025). Laybourn's previous work 'The Animate Landscape' (2023) animated plants. The reliefs also include a pile of about a hundred plaster casts of stones, some with words like 'tanke', 'iturevet', and 'ubehag', which the critic finds redundant. The exhibition raises questions about the possibility of ecological intimacy and the limits of human perspective.