Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art
Tjuvholmen
October 29 2014 - April 5 2015
Marianne Heske: tour - Retour
Marianne Heske’s Prosjekt Gjerdeløa (Project Gjerdeløa) is recognized as a key work in Norwegian Art history, especially within Norwegian conceptual art.
In comparison with much international Conceptual art, which was often based on highly rational formulations, the Nordic Conceptual artists invented a more poetic and open art. In many cases, they used the Nordic landscape as a setting for their actions and reflections, more often creating visual poetry than scientifically reasoned works. Even though Conceptual art never became a major movement on the Norwegian scene, some artists were touched by these artistic possibilities. Marianne Heske (b. 1946) is without doubt one of the most important of those who adopted the working methods and the inner logics of Conceptual art but transformed them into a personal expression.
In 1980 Heske created a historic work by moving a 350 year old log cabin, Gjerdeløa, from Tafjord in Norway to Paris. Project Gjerdeløa was Heske’s artistic project for the XI Biennale de Paris and was exhibited at the Pompidou Centre. The log cabin was later moved from Paris to Norway again, where it was exhibited at Henie Onstad Art Center, before subsequently being returned to its place of origin exactly one year after it was first dismantled. Project Gjerdeløa has been recognized as a key work in Norwegian art history in general, and in Norwegian Conceptual art in particular.
For the exhibition tour – Retour, Marianne Heske has resumed and developed the project by yet again moving the log cabin from its original location in Tafjord to Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo. The original Gjerdeløa is installed next to a newly produced cast of the log cabin in a white, transparent resin and together they constitute a new work and the exhibition tour – Retour. The installation also contains the painting Fra Gudvangen (1843) by the Norwegian artist Adolph Tidemand (1814-1876), on loan from the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, which contextualizes the appropriation of the national landscape in Heske’s oeuvre. tour - Retour is a process, a transformation and a displacement, addressing temporality and the very notion of art. Beyond its self-reflecting nature, it introduces historical references and narratives that include Norwegian Romanticism and autobiographical elements.
Curators: Gunnar B. Kvaran og Therese Möllenhoff
February 12 - May 3
NN-A NN-A NN-A
Astrup Fearnley Museet has the pleasure of presenting the exhibition NN-A NN-A NN-A – New Norwegian Abstraction.
Modernism has always had a strong position in Norwegian art and culture. In the past years, one can observe how young Norwegian artists are returning to the mindset and expression of modernism. A particular emphasis is placed on the abstract directions, like abstract expressionism, minimalism and concrete art and has also turned in to a renewed interest for painting and sculpture. The exhibition is focusing on a young generations artists, working with a new, abstract expression. The artists has clear connections with the modernistic inheritance, but is at the same time clearly anchored in its own time and its conceptual terms, techniques and semantic references. NN-A NN-A NN-A will show the contours of a generation that with its artistic expression is about to write a new chapter in Norwegian art history.
Participating artists: Ann Iren Buan, Petter Buhagen, Marie Buskov, Ida Ekblad, Ivan Galuzin, Tiril Hasselknippe, Johanne Hestvold, Marianne Hurum, Marte Johnslien, Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Camilla Løw, Magnhild Øen Nordahl, Anders Sletvold Moe, Aurora Passero, Olve Sande, Fredrik Værslev, Emma Ilja Wyller
Curators: Gunnar B. Kvaran, Hanne Beate Ueland and Therese Möllenhoff
