21st-29th October 2023
Please join us for the opening Friday 20th October 7-9pm, with a performance by the artist at 7.30pm.
Kunsthall Oslo is very pleased to present Vital Signs, Melissa Gordon’s first solo exhibition in Norway. Gordon reframes the history of modernist painting as a series of conversations about representation and power that are played out both on the painted surface and in real, physical space. For the exhibition Vital Signs, Gordon refers in particular to the histories of four female artists: Helen Frankenthaler, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Agnes Martin and Janet Sobel. The Kunsthall Oslo gallery has been reworked with a series of large-scale interventions that refer, among other times and places, to Gordon’s former studio at De Ateliers in Amsterdam, and to Agnes Martin’s adobe cabin at Galisteo in New Mexico. In this environment Gordon will present paintings from her series Female Readymades, alongside new print works. Vital Signs is also the title of a new book collecting Gordon’s writings, lectures and performances, which will be launched during the Oslo show.
Melissa Gordon is an artist, writer and publisher, and currently Professor of Painting at Oslo National Academy of Arts. Gordon was born in the US and graduated from De Ateliers, Amsterdam, in 2003. She has exhibited widely including in the exhibitions CON10UR Biennial, Mechelen (2023), Liquid Gestures, Towner Gallery, Eastbourne (2021), and at Spike Island, Bristol, Vleeshal, Middelburg, WIELS, Brussels, Museum Dhont-Dhaenens, GARAGE, Rotterdam, Eastside Projects, Birmingham, Frans Masereel Centrum, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf amongst others. Her writing has been published in May Revue, Texte Zur Kunst, and the books Acts of Painting (Graphite Cel, BE), and Painting: Funny Peculiar (Slimvolume, UK).
Vital Signs is supported by Arts Council Norway.