Kurt Johannessen
26.10.07 – 02.12.07
In 2007, there was a larger presentation of Kurt Johannessen's artistic practice, which included performance, installations and documentation from previous works. This exhibition was first shown at Bergen Art Museum 22.05.07-09.09.07, before coming to Kunstnerenes Hus.
Johannessen performed two works during the exhibition period: "Lumen 2" and "Andre møte".
Excerpt from the publication
Kurt Johannessen has worked for over 20 years within forms of artistic expression that are particularly associated with avant-garde art since the 1960s: Installation, artist's books and performance. Although the points of contact between these different forms of expression are clear within his work, it is the performance aspect through which Johannessen is best known. He was among the first to work with this expression in Norwegian art, and is the Norwegian artist who has most strongly maintained this form of expression throughout his career. Johannessen has achieved international recognition both with performance and through his artist's books.
Marked by its poetic, meditative form, his art differs from many of the prominent representatives of performance in Europe and the USA in the 1960s and 1970s. He conveys an existential quest that has its historical roots in the more reflective artistic sensibilities of the 1980s, but formulated in a strongly personal and consistent expression. Much of his art has an introspective and quiet feel, but nevertheless opens up an experience of both the most fleeting and most magnificent elements of life. The relationship with nature recalls older mythical and romantic ideas, but also links to a specific Nordic sensibility. In his reflection on the relationship with nature, Kurt Johannessen makes an original contribution within this central field in Norwegian and Nordic art. Through his commuting between the artistic space, meaningful sites and isolated outposts, he alternately shows himself as messenger, mediator and mystical communicator. Through his art, Kurt Johannessen moves in an overwhelming range between what he himself calls "everything and nothing".
Marked by its poetic, meditative form, his art differs from many of the prominent representatives of performance in Europe and the USA in the 1960s and 1970s. He conveys an existential quest that has its historical roots in the more reflective artistic sensibilities of the 1980s, but formulated in a strongly personal and consistent expression. Much of his art has an introspective and quiet feel, but nevertheless opens up an experience of both the most fleeting and most magnificent elements of life. The relationship with nature recalls older mythical and romantic ideas, but also links to a specific Nordic sensibility. In his reflection on the relationship with nature, Kurt Johannessen makes an original contribution within this central field in Norwegian and Nordic art. Through his commuting between the artistic space, meaningful sites and isolated outposts, he alternately shows himself as messenger, mediator and mystical communicator. Through his art, Kurt Johannessen moves in an overwhelming range between what he himself calls "everything and nothing".
- Preface by Audun Eckhoff
