The Purpose of a System is What it Does: KODE

The exhibition will span 25 years of artistic production through more than 125 works at Kode’s main venue for temporary exhibitions, Stenersen, bringing together seminal works of Einarsson’s oeuvre, as well as new works commissioned specially for the exhibition.

The purpose of a system is what it does (POSIWID) is part of Kode’s ongoing series dedicated to mid-career artists with personal and professional connections to Bergen, where Einarsson studied in the late 1990s. Einarsson works across a wide range of media, including installation, painting, sculpture, printmaking, video and photography.

Drawing on his own ever expanding artistic archive, comprising photographs, archival material and other collected sources, Einarsson uses found materials to explore the visual culture that surrounds us.

The Purpose of a System

The exhibition draws its title from a phrase coined by the British theorist Stafford Beer: “The purpose of a system is what it does”.

The phrase explains how the observed purpose of a system is often at odds with the intentions of those who design, operate and promote it. How visible, and invisible, power structures in our contemporary society play out and affect us, has been a consistent theme in Einarsson’s practice.

Einarsson’s visual language addresses both the ways in which resistance can arise in response to a surveillant control society, and how extreme individualism and countercultural positions have, at times, manifested in terrorism and crime.

In the same way, he also addresses the art world as a system that balances between communication and exclusion, where questions of style and real political conflict can unfold simultaneously.

Recurring themes in his work are the outsider position, the tension between group mentality and personal freedom, and countercultural movements such as activism and punk culture.

Einarsson dissects the English language with precision and wit, distilling the zeitgeists of contemporary culture with bleak levity. Despite his often dark themes ridden with paranoia and doom, humour lurks in the background. 

The accompanying catalogue, to be published by Skira Arte in December 2026, will offer new perspectives on Einarsson’s practice by Dieter Roelstraete, Huey Copeland, Mathias Faldbakken, and a essay by the exhibition curator Synnøve Marie Vik.

Kode