Steinar Haga Kristensen
Galleri Brandstrup is delighted to invite you to the opening of Steinar Haga Kristensen's upcoming exhibitions titled "World Report" and “Inclination of Motif and the In-dept Commotion of What-ever Singularity" at Cromwell Place in London, on Tuesday, October 3rd at 6 PM. The exhibition will be on display through October 14.
"World Report"
Between the years 2011 and 2018, Steinar Haga Kristensen created four distinct oil paintings titled "Hidden Advocacy #01 - #04." These paintings all depict a humanoid figure with their body oriented toward the interior of the image. The figure looks over their shoulder towards the viewer, revealing two similar abstractions they hold behind their back.
In 2020, this motif resurfaces in the extensive intaglio print edition called "Jubileum 2020," consisting of 39 intaglio prints. All of these prints feature the same motif, but this time the figure also carries 38 other motifs from the artist's body of work.
In 2021, this series of figures were transformed into avatars, programmed for limited interaction, and placed within a virtual and comprehensive world in the form of a video game. This game was constructed using digital reproductions of individual artworks from that same year.
Since the beginning of 2022, Haga Kristensen has been working as an observational artist within this virtual world. His observations are conveyed through oil paintings and Vat dye (indigosol) paintings. A selection of these reports is exhibited here at Cromwell Place. These reports offer a profound understanding and essential insights into the world created by Haga Kristensen.
"Inclination of Motif and the In-depth Commotion of What-ever Singularity"
At the core of Steinar Haga Kristensen's practice lies a relentless performance of the “itself” and its motifs. It is from this that every object and situation take shape and form. The continuous digestion and re-digestion of motifs in Haga Kristensen's practice, aside from committing to an exhaustive perversion of artistry, can be seen as a form of self-ornamentation. This tendency reaches its climax in the selected works for this exhibition.
The paintings in frames are adorned with reliefs sourced from previous motifs. They explore the yet unexplored potentialities inherent in ornamentation as a phenomenon of civilization, a manifestation of identification, collective imaginings, and the occurrence of historical movement, even in the most trivial of sites.