“Contemporary art is quite far away from what I’m doing,” said H.C. Gilje, as he sat in the gallery surrounded by his art.In two weeks, Gilje has found a way to change a popular Pittsburgh gallery into his own personal studio filled with his colorful creations.The Norwegian artist, HC Gilje’s, in transit exhibit has a new temporary home in the Wood Street Galleries, where it can be seen for the next several weeks. This exhibit is Gilje’s first solo show in the United States.As an artist that is well-known in Europe, Gilje, originally from Bergen, Norway, is excited to have his artwork shown in a solo exhibition in the United States, but especially at the Wood Street Galleries.”It is partly the tradition of this gallery, which has shown a lot of artists I really like myself. So it’s kind of a good company of artists to be a part of,” Gilje said in the gallery last Wednesday as he talked about his excitement for the show.Gilje’s work is video installation in which he projects bright, vibrant colors onto different objects, as well as the surrounding space of the gallery. The gallery literally becomes part of the exhibit as he uses the walls and floor to produce patterns that are slowly, but constantly changing.In two of his pieces “Circle #4” and “Frame #2,” he uses circle and square props for different projection effects. “Blink” is one of the pieces that uses both the floor and wall space as its only components for the light.Gilje, who has also designed sets for films, music videos, and theater, became interested in working with light and installations and using them as more of an artistic outlet in 2009.”I’m quite inspired by just looking around me at how a landscape or a city changes in daytime to nighttime, how the light kind of forms how we experience the space or an object. So I’m just trying to move that way of molding our experience in the gallery space,” Gilje said.This inspiration of looking at different forms of light and how people react to them is one of the main goals that Gilje has for those who observe his work.”I’m more trying to create spaces where people can slow down and maybe relate to something else. People usually have a tendency to stay for a while when they first come in because it’s almost like a meditation space in one way; people get into a different mindset, which for me is kind of a valuable goal in itself,” Gilje said.Gilje’s intent with his pieces was one of the main reasons that Murray Horne, Curator of Wood Street Galleries Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, was interested in having Gilje exhibit his work at the gallery.Horne, originally from Australia, received an e-mail from Gilje about how he might be interested in viewing his work and invited him to his show in Brussels. Horne, who was already planning a trip to Europe, decided to accept the invitation and go to the show, where he says he loved Gilje’s work.”Typically, video artists would have us do a small room or a box of some type and they project using a traditional format developed from projecting movies,” Horne said his office at the gallery last Wednesday. “But he’s not doing that; he’s using the whole gallery space and he projects within the existing space and I thought that was pretty interesting.”Although Horne was interested in the methods and media used to compose the artwork, he was also attracted to the content of the Gilje’s installations.”The imagery is completely non-figurative… So it’s completely about itself. The reason why the video camera was developed was to reproduce reality, reproduce existing imagery. But in [Gilje’s] case, imagery is completely constructed by the artist,” Horne said.This non-figurative imagery that uses mainly color as its composition is what Horne believes makes Gilje’s exhibition different than most works that have been shown at the Wood Street Galleries, but also what people find appealing.Rachel Tokarski, the Curatorial Assistant at the Wood Street Galleries and also Point Park alumni, felt similar to Horne about Gilje’s exhibit.”I’m very excited about it because with the open space in the gallery and for people to be able to walk around, I’m excited to see their reaction to the space and how he has adapted these pieces to fit for this gallery,” Tokarski said in the gallery last Wednesday.Tokarski, who is originally from Pittsburgh, has been working at the Wood Street Galleries for approximately three years now and out of the many exhibitions she has seen there, she felt that this exhibit had a calming feel that was different from many other art pieces.