Galleri Brandstrup

Idun Baltzersen (1987 in Trondheim, Norway) lives and works in Stockholm. Her practice spans across monumental and spatial borders with a diverse range of drawing and graphics; on paper, textile, and wood. The artist draws inspiration from film, television, and Instagram, which is where many of her characters in the works are gathered. The scale is important, and she prefers to work with the largest dimensions possible, to the point where her back gets crooked, and her fingers get splinters. She uses materials that are not traditionally associated with art, materials you can buy at a hardware store or IKEA. After she has printed on textile, Baltzersen further processes the printing plates with a jigsaw, oil paint, to make an assembly. The surfaces are then treated with varnish and epoxy, which creates different varieties of gloss. Idun Baltzersen is represented in collections such as Moderna Museet, Sweden, Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden, Magasin III Museum & Foundation for contemporary art, Sweden, Haugesund Billedgalleri, Norway, Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden, Statens konstråd, Sweden, Trondheim Kommune, Norway St. Olavs Hospital, Norway, amongst others.

Christer Glein (1984 in Trondheim, Norway) lives and works in Stockholm. In his recent work, Glein sustains his past relationship with classical techniques of painting, while introducing an abstract foundation. The result is a series of paintings showing a formal distinction between the craft of realism and abstraction, in addition to their roles in art history. In exploring the possibilities of abstract painting, Glein separates between two different techniques.

On one hand, one can recognize the loose and rough brushstrokes of expressionism and on the other hand, the abstraction of Supremacism, which is characterised by its sharp edges. The formal elements are precise and exact, placed within the abstract universe of different elements. Glein also explores the formal elements within the figurative; for example by stretching a body over the canvas in an almost baroque mannerist way, recalling the expressionistic bodies of Egon Schiele. As he combines different associative material into one canvas from different traditions in art, one can analyse his paintings in an echo of poststructuralist thinking in response to structuralism. As Glein takes different symbols from historic contexts and places them together again, he breaks through the way we view art history as a linear chain of styles. He creates a new, full and complete visual language, despite their characteristics of a wide diversity of historic movements

Øyvind Sørfjordmo (1987) lives and works in Oslo. Sørfjordmo’s drawings, paintings and sculptures engage in dialogue with one another across their different media, with the joint goal of exploring the limitations within the materials used; resulting in a steady connection across the artworks exhibited. He masterly lets the viewer experience his exhibitions as one single installation, while we simultaneously get captured into each one of the individual artworks.

Sørfjordmo’s first solo exhibition at Galleri Brandstrup “Vacation Time” in 2019, was a result of a longer stay in Paris at the residency Cité Internationale des Arts, where he paid particular attention to the art group “Les Nabis”. Consisting of artists such as Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, the group worked at the end of the 19-century and played a great role in the transition from impressionism to abstract art. In contradiction to the bright pastels of Les Nabis, Sørfjordmo has used a much more darkened palette. Sørfjordmo says “I wanted to create an expression in my paintings that is similar to the sensory experience of looking out into the darkness at night. Like the dusk develops over time, I want to invite the viewer to see new things when studying the surface of my canvases, to finish the paintings for me.” In the fall of 2021, he presented his solo show at the gallery, titled “Faro”, consisting of new paintings that have been created during Sørfjordmo’s artist residency at Nordic Artists’ Center in Dale, in the autumn of 2020.