Art in Bergen

Pix from exhibitions in Bergen here. Click image below to see more.



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Crime

KUNSTforumTV and ArtSceneTrondheim presents Narve Hovdenakk: Re-kriminalisert @ Gråmølna Trondheim Kunstmuseum. (Intervju is in Norwegian)

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Bjarne Melgaard @ Astrup Fearnley Museum

Bjarne Melgaard: Jealous @ Astrup Fearnley Museum. Click image below 2 view pix.


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Ivan Galuzin @ Freddy Knox Projectspace

Pix from Ivan Galuzin: Concrete particular insecurity breeds sympathy which can grow into content security breeds adornment, @ Freddy Knox Projectspace, 9. - 24. januar.


(click pix 2 see more image @ kunstforum.as)
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New Exhibitionx in Oslo

Javier Barrios: Pink is the New Space, på Bærum Kulturhus i Sandvika, 06.01-31.01.
Line Helen Danielsen: Homeward bound, Galleri BOA, 07.01–24.01.
Bjørn Hegardt: Hinterland, på Tegneforbundet, 07.01-31.01.
Josefine Lyche/ Henrik Pask: In trance we trust, i Tjuvholmen allé 10 i Oslo, 07.01-10.01.


(click on image 2 view pix)
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video on Bruce Nauman

See this enjoyable video about Bruce Nauman:


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From the Venice Biennale 2009

See Jan Christensen & Kristian Skylstad in this video from William Forsythe's work in the Venice Biennale.

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Rod Bianco opens in Oslo

Saturday 12. of December the gallery Rod Bianco opened in Oslo. The gallery is a collaboration between artist Bjarne Melgaard and among others Svein Roar Grande, who runs the galleries 7011 Trondheim and 7011 Vestfossen. The openeing exhibition is named Damascus and shows works of Bjarne Melgaard, Thaddeus Strode, Axel Hütte, Andreas Widerøe Hagen and Big Fat Black Cock Inc.

See pix @ Kunstforum.as.
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New Pix @ Kunstforum

The last couples of weeks art students across the land has been showing their work, be it in progress or not, and invited common people like me and you into their studios. Some of those pix can be seen @ Kunstforum right now: from Oslo and from Trondheim Enjoy!
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Lars Laumann received Statoil Art Award

Yesterday video artist Lars Laumann received Statoil Art Award. The award is on 500 000 Norwegian Kroner and is the largest art award in Norway. Watch video from the award ceremony here (in Norwegian only)


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A record number of visitors to the Art Biennale

Venice, November, 24th 2009 – With a record-breaking number of visitors the 53rd International Art Exhibition Fare Mondi // Making Worlds directed by Daniel Birnbaum and organized by the Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, closed its doors on November 22nd. The Exhibition was inaugurated on June 6th by Italy’s President, Giorgio Napolitano.

There was a total of 375,702 visitors to the Exhibition (compared to 319,332 in 2007 an increase of 18%), which was held in the exhibition sites of the Giardini and the Arsenale. During the 24 weeks of its running time, the 53rd Exhibition was constantly at the top of the rankings of the most-visited exhibitions in Italy, with a daily average of 2,223 visitors and record numbers during the weekends of 9,761 people. 132,185 students visited the 53rd Exhibition, either individually or in groups.

The 2009 Biennale has attracted a record number of 77 national participations and 44 collateral events, held throughout Venice.

Among the successful novelties was the renewed Italian Pavilion which doubled the exhibition space for the Italian national participation, marking a turn in the relevance of the participation of the Italian artists. Moreover, the Venice Pavilion, promoted by Regione del Veneto, was this year dedicated to Venetian glass art, thus reintroducing the original tradition of dedicating this space also to the applied arts.

Pics from the Biennale di Venezia here on GaliBlog:

Venezia 1

Venezia 2

Venezia 3

Venezia 4

Venezia 5
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“Stil Rustique” in Kristiansand

About lizards, snakes and pig-flu pandemonium.

Text by Steffen Krüger (simultanously published in Norwegian @ Kunstforum.as)

It is an entertaining coincidence that in our flu-fearing times a whole different incidence of border violation has finally put an image to our growing unease. When on Monday, October 26, customs officers at Kristiansand stopped a twentytwo-year-old trying to smuggle fourteen small king-python snakes in socks wrapped around his chest, ten leopard-geckos in tobacco boxes taped to his legs and a tarantula in his suitcase, this did not only provide the papers with a bizarre story in the assorted news sections, it also created photo opportunities that, unknown to the photographers themselves, tapped right into an age-old tradition of imagining the uncanny (pic here).


This tradition has always made abundant use of vermin – bugs, snakes, lizards, toads etc. – repugnant, grotesque, and somewhat worrisome little creatures, which frequently could be found at the fringes of otherwise serious works.



The tradition reached its highpoint in the second part of the 16th century, when the depiction of low-life animals even formed something akin to an artistic style. The Viennese art historian Ernst Kris aptly baptised it “Stil Rustique” – an earthy, realistic, and highly charged style that derived its stunning life-like effects from using casts over nature.

Tipping and wriggling, biting and nibbling, tickling and prickling – the rustic fashion was so far removed from the more conventional aesthetics of – earlier times that it was understood as representing an ‘anti-nature’: the abject downside of Renaissance decorum and the exact opposite of the kind of naturalistic depiction which had been considered as of divine origin and equilibrium. Contrasting the fertile and life-giving, they were meant to forebode ill-health and understood as signs of decay and decline.



In the works of Wenzel Jamnitzer and Bernard Palissy, the two main proponents of the “Stil Rustique”, lizards and the likes were meant to ridicule and degrade the antique bowls and goblets onto which they were strewn. Here, they appear as all-too-realistic parasites composing themselves to make their home on the snobbish neo-classical forms.



Three and a half centuries on, an echo of the irritation that these animals came to symbolize could still be perceived in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. Here lizards, who have the ability to re-grow their tails, stand for castration fears as well as for the defense against them – in other words: for a feeling of insecurity about one’s own powers and legitimacy. Vermin in general is considered by Freud as representing unwanted siblings or an unwanted pregnancy – both archetypical situations of intolerable intrusion.

Now, from Freud’s interpretation there seems to be a straight line to the case of border violation in Kristiansand, for what we find in the images of smuggled animals is exactly that symbolic tradition that the psychoanalyst pointed to. Accidentally, the “Stil Rustique” has returned and, with it, the long-standing tradition of symbolizing uncontrollable processes of transgression, of mingling, interchanging, incubating, multiplying, overgrowing, of unstoppable ruination and slow decline. In this respect, the entertainingly repellent pictures from Kristiansand, which, by the way, made news all over the world, can well be seen as reflections of our very own ‘pandemic pandemonium’. And while, in this case, our borders have been protected, we can only marvel at the exorbitant number of undetected cases slipping through.





List of Images:
Bürgli, Jost; Eisenhoit, Antonius: ”Globe Céleste Mécanique” (detail), ca. 1582

Carpaccio, Vittore: StGeorge and the Dragon, 1502-7 (detail/ whole)

Jamnitzer, Wenzel, bowl, 1550-1560

Images taken from:
Falguières, Patricia (ed.) : Ernst Kris. Le Style Rustique, Paris 2005
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Video of Sverre Malling working on his drawings

Video of Sverre Malling working on his drawings during his residency in Lillehammer.


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Frieze Art Fair @ Regent's Park

Pix from Frieze Art Fair that took place 15-18 october @ Regent's Park in London.

















































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Hotch Potch London @ MK II in Hackney

Pix from the exhibition Hotch Potch London @ MK II in Hackney from 13th - 17th october.








































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