Harald Fenn
dal 4/3/2005 al 17/4/2005
Segnalato da
4/3/2005
Harald Fenn
Galleri Wang, Oslo
The exhibition consists of 16 new paintings ranging from small to large and monumental formats. In the ten years Fenn has taken the form of grids, circles, and lines, in structures superimposed on an unfocused background. In the early paintings these structures carry associations to a world of war, power, and violence
We have pleasure in inviting you to Harald Fenn's solo exhibition at Galleri Wang.
"There is an elusive quality to Harald Fenn's paintings: the moment you are about to grasp the motif, it turns into something else. You see either a grill pattern in the foreground or the features of a landscape in the background. It is a strange view; indeed it seems as if the various picture planes compete, for they do not converge into a higher unity, a harmonious whole.
It is as if man can no longer focus purely and clearly on nature alone: something intervenes between the viewer and nature. In the ten years Fenn has been painting this has taken the form of grids, circles, and lines, in structures superimposed on an unfocused background. In the early paintings these structures carry associations to a world of war, power, and violence, with their swastikas, five-pointed stars, circles suggestive of missile sights, and lines appearing to indicate the flight of fighter planes and tracer bullets. But a screen consisting of references to the gratuitous inclusion of such figures and symbols in popular culture creates a distance – this is no true picture of war and violence, "what appears in Fenn's pictures is more of a conducted and culturally processed experience of war, the popular image of war and its fervent veneration as conveyed by the innocently grotesque abstract naturalism of toys, action films, and computer games.
His paintings from 1996 and 1997 seem to pull you into an electronically flashing scenery, seemingly infinite, in a dizzying spatial experience. For the space is undefined, diffuse, suggestive. And then you realize that this virtual flashing infinity is static, for it is created by means of layering different picture planes, making the picture close around its own world, instead of opening up."
in Pockets of Melancholy by Trond Borgen
Over the last six years, Harald Fenn (born 1963) has held solo exhibitions at the Artist's Association in Oslo, at Galleri Sølvberget in Stavanger and Galleri S.E. in Bergen. In addition, he has participated in joint exhibitions at the Henie-Onstad Art Centre at Høvik, the Drammen Museum and the Bomuldsfabriken art hall in Arendal and in conjunction with the Carnegie Art Award.
His works have been purchased by the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Astrup Fearnley Collection in Oslo, Sørlandet Art Museum in Kristiansand and by the Norwegian concerns Hydro and Nordea in addition to a number of private collections.
The exhibition at Galleri Wang consists of 16 new paintings ranging from small to large and monumental formats.
Welcome to the exhibition opening on Saturday 5th March at 2pm
The press are invited to meet the artist at the gallery during the mounting of the exhibition from Tuesday 1st March.
Galleri Wang
Kristian Augusts gate 11
Oslo