Amerika
8th March – 27th April 2014
Opening Friday March 7th, 19.00
Kunsthall Oslo is very pleased to present the exhibition Amerika, a focused retrospective of the work of the influential Norwegian artist Morten Krohg.
Over five decades as an artist, Morten Krohg (born 1937) has used his work to communicate a radical social vision, to ridicule bureaucracy and oppose militarism. In particular, he has repeatedly returned to the theme of the violence of the American state, from police action against civil rights protestors in the 1960s to the bombing of civilians in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
At the same time, his practice has been deeply influenced by the US post-war avant garde; his early work owed much to Robert Rauschenberg, and he worked to organise an influential (and controversial) exhibition by Andy Warhol at Kunstnernes hus in 1968. Amerika, Krohg’s retrospective at Kunsthall Oslo, follows these two intertwined strands in his practice from the early 1960s to the present, and highlights his continuing commitment to the explicit politicisation of Pop Art strategies.
Pop Art, and Warhol in particular, demonstrated the radical potential of the decontextualised image, the car crash and the electric chair torn from the pages of the newspaper and reprinted in the newly defined and apparently neutral space of the hip white cube, ultimately remaking the accepted methods of high art. But Krohg’s work began in earnest in the aftermath of this first, gentle shock to the art world system, and on the crest of a wave of revolutionary transformation that swept through Western culture in 1968. As a central member of the GRAS group he helped to define a new approach within Norwegian art that aimed to leave behind the disinterested contemplation of museum-bound production in favour of an idea of a new, living art. The GRAS ideal was of an art that would not comfort the rich or support the self-image of the state, but would draw on mass media aesthetics, confront contemporary social and political questions, and circulate widely, in homes and factories, and in the streets.
The exhibition at Kunsthall Oslo will present some of Krohg’s best-known work, including the installation Do You Know How To Reach The Influential California Market? as well as rarely seen early sculptures; later paintings, prints and collages; and recent text paintings. Amerika offers an image both of oppression and of liberation.
Morten Krohg (born 1937) graduated from The National Academy of Art in Oslo and the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Krohg was Chairman of the Board of Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, 1967-1969, and was involved in founding the Vestland Academy of Art in Bergen, where he was Director of Studies from 1973 to 1979, and later Dean from 1986 to 1991. From 1997-2007 he was Professor of Applied Aesthetics at Oslo University College.
Morten Krohg had his first solo exhibition in 1960 at Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo, and has since had numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Norway. Recent solo shows include “War Game”, Kongsberg kunstforening, 2012; “A Look Back”, Porsgrunn kunstforening, 2012; “Reconstructed Memories”, Stavanger kulturhus 2009, Sogn og Fjordane kunstmuseum, Førde, 2008 and Kunstbanken Hedmark Art Centre, Oslo, 2007. Recent group exhibitions include Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum’s opening exhibition, Førde, 2012; “GRAS”, Norwegian Industrial Workers Union, Rjukan, 2011; and “Four GRAS Artists”, Gallery Lautom, Oslo, 2011. Krohg was a member of the artists’ group
The exhibition is supported by Arts Council Norway
Painting from the series Bureaucrats, 1979.