Wed 13 SEP 18:00
Visual Art Exhibition / VERNISSAGE
Exhibition runs from 13—23 SEPTEMBER 2023
SUBSTRAT
Asle Nyborg (NO)
Asle's paintings are open to different techniques and approaches. Photo emulsion, regular photo, drawing and text. The paintings are made up of associations, inspirations and visual sources that fascinates him.
“Many images have found their beginnings in song lyrics or dialogue fragments from favorite films, initiated by poetry collections and fiction. In my works there are all these different expressions and references to literature, film and music, especially clearly in the titles and text elements in the images. The work process is a constant dance to create a balance between chaos and harmony in the image, between surface and content.
Text and photo contribute not only as thematic and literary hints, but also to the purely visual structure of the image, a rigor and a resistance to the painterly flow.
Over time, I have accumulated a catalog of photos and texts that I often return to and use in new contexts. My way of working can give associations to contemporary music, especially to sampling, what is sampled is stored as a block of sound and this block of sound can potentially be inserted into an infinite number of contexts. Likewise, I can organize and reorganize my visual blocks, constantly creating new constellations and expressions.
We live in a copy culture, where the original seems to be referred to history and the copy is the main motif of the present. Many of my works can be read as a commentary on an essay by Walter Benjamin "The work of art in the age of reproduction". Benjamin defined the aura of the work of art as the work's character of being unique, of having a one-off occurrence. Reproducibility threatens this aura, as the one-off occurrence is replaced by a mass occurrence.
Despite the use of mechanical means of reproduction – photography appears in many of my images, my works have the character of a one-off. The work is not reproducible as it is painted, the photographs are developed directly in the canvas or otherwise embedded in the paint. In a certain sense, these works, which are very painterly in aesthetics, can represent painting's revenge on photography, where photography is reduced to a raw material for painting.”
- Asle Nyborg lives and works in Höganäs and was the owner of Vitlycke before it became a residency place for performing arts.
PRESS
“His paint is laid in layers upon layers, it is allowed to flow and splash. The basis is often a photograph developed directly on the canvas and then painted over with acrylic in several carelessly applied layers, so that the image sometimes almost disappears. Above it lines, dots, imprecise grid patterns like a raster. If you get closer, you can find scribbled note paper pasted on the canvas in one work. The mixed technique together with the montage-like motifs give the impression of a game of chance.”
“Control is written in white text on a black painted paper, next to a photo of a couple on a shopping street. In another image, two men in coats walk purposefully forward. The people are blurred, as if caught on the fly. What does it say? I could speculate on such things as contemporary man's life choices, the rush, the seeming notion of power over existence. But what I mainly think about is the artist's own control over what he does. And how he plays with the lack of control.” Helsingborg dagblad
BIO
Born in Levanger, Norway in 1966, moved to Oslo in 1985. Began artistic education at Strykejernet Tegne og maleskole in Oslo 1987-98. Admitted to Kunstakademiet in Trondheim 1992-93, then moved back to Oslo and started at the Statens kunstakademi 1993-97. Shortly after completing his education, he began collaborate with a number of art galleries around Norway. 2001 he moved to Strömstad, then to Tanum in 2005 with construction and renovation of Vitlycke farm until 2010. After Vitlycke he moved to Skåne, where he now live and work in an old school in Höganäs with his wife and son.