Naeun Kang, Checking In, Centralbanken, Oslo
This autumn Naeun Kang showed three new works at Centralbanken that offered a refreshing twist to the naïvist strand of painting that has enjoyed prominence on the Oslo scene, and beyond, for the past few years. Kang’s thin layers and dry brush give her canvases a notably porous texture. She registers figures with tender precision while simultaneously courting their dissolution, like an inner image that she is trying to retain and articulate as it slips away. Combining an expressive rendering of emotional states with the supra-sensual language of metaphor, Kang achieves a finely calibrated blend of materiality and sign – that is, veritable snapshots from inside the painter’s mouth.
Arbeidstittel: The Workers, Haugar Kunstmuseum, Tønsberg
Curator Erlend Hammer’s inspired and somewhat vindictive exhibition at Haugar Kunstmuseum in Tønsberg this summer should be commended not least for bringing attention to a problem that art historian Ina Blom also touched on in her lecture at the museum conference in Tromsø earlier this year. Blom pointed out what she considers a peculiarly Norwegian belief, namely that a well led art museum is one with the least possible amount of art historical competence among its leaders. While we are drowning in vapid and pompous communiqués from our largest exhibition producers that sound like something fished out of the trash bin at strategic advisory firm First House on a Friday night, it is reassuring to note that some of our museums are still willing to take risks in order to bolster the intuitions and ideas of their curatorial staff.
Institute of Degenerate Art, Landschaft, Kunsthandler Christian Torp, Oslo
Peeking into the lens of what looked like a projector but was actually a fountain pump, in the incorrigibly Duchamp-enamoured Institute of Degenerate Art’s much anticipated comeback exhibition at Kunsthandler Christian Torp this autumn, you met the gaze of a small wooden gnome with a red hat and blustering cheeks. His eyes were fixed on the shiny cookie box mounted to the opposite wall, its savoury contents scattered on the floor. In hindsight, the scene looked like a hearty “Merry Christmas!” that in spirit dated back to ca. 2010, a time when art was still, in its best moments, a cheerful game of deferred meaning, and artworks’ intentions were intractable mysteries.
Translation: Stian Gabrielsen
