NÅ. INGENTING. TO.

Sverre Bjertnæs (1976, Trondheim) opens his first solo show “NÅ. INGENTING. TO.” at Galleri Brandstrup Friday February 6 at 7pm. Bjertnæs will exhibit a new line of works, consisting of sculptures and a series of paintings, representing the core of the exhibition. Each artwork has its own visual language, held together by a complex and conceptual framework without an explicit linear story. 

Bjertnæs was educated at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, for then to further develop his studies at AKI Academy of Fine Art in Enschede in the Netherlands. However, he made his mark as a young figurative painter after attending the Norwegian Nerdrum School as a teenager. During the most recent years, he has been rising as a star in Norway’s contemporary art scene, with a strong artistic identity. 

Trough out “NÅ. INGENTING. TO.” Bjertnæs demonstrates how he is in a constant creative development in the process of painting. Though Bjertnæs was trained in the field of classical painting, he started developing a complex expressionistic vocabulary after graduating. In this exhibition, Bjertnæs will display ten new paintings where each work shows a new discovery for the artist and is equipped with its particular symbolism.

The artist’s first solo exhibition was in 2000 at the Norwegian gallery Norsk Anarkistisk Fraksjon, run by artist Bjarne Melgaard. Through the years, the two have developed close affiliation, which has had a great impact on Bjertnæs’ creative exploration. Their relationship led to Bjertnæs first international solo exhibition in 2012 in New York, at White Columns Gallery, which was named one of the 10 best exhibitions in New York the same year by the New York Times. Maximalist curating has become one of Bjertnæs’ trademarks, where the rooms where filled up to the edge with artworks, also as shown at the solo exhibition “Nervous Fluids” at Stenersenmuseet in Oslo.

“NÅ. INGENTING. TO” will consist of all new artworks and in addition to his paintings, Bjertnæs is showing five new sculptures cast in bronze. They are different figures that all tell separate stories: from Adam and Eve’s eviction from paradise, to fantasy stories of mythical creatures. He will also be showing eighty illustrated photographs, an animated movie and several sound works which are, as the exhibition, titled Nå, Ingenting and To. 

The curation focuses on the divisions of the gallery space at Galleri Brandstrup; divided into two parts, the upper and the lower gallery. The Norwegian violinist Bertil Palmar Johansen has composed the sound works, which has a symbolic placement in a long corridor between two sections of the gallery. The two parts symbolizes two different parts of the course of life. In upper gallery, Bjertnæs has created a room that gives a feeling of aloneness. In the lower gallery, a larger space at the other end of the corridor, he explores the various aspects of love, life as two and of death.