OSL Contemporary

Ragna Bley (b. 1986, Uppsala, Sweden) is an artist based in Oslo working with painting, sculpture, text, and performance. Bley’s artistic work is characterized by an experimental and refined use of materials and colours, with motives often referring to literature, science fiction and bio-politics. Bley’s monumental paintings testify to a dynamic, energetic, and vaulting painting process, with a unique kind of colouring and staining of the canvas. The paint seems to follow its own path, forming free, fluidic transitions before tightening up to almost graphical forms, confidently navigating within the borderland between imagination and abstraction.

Bley has a BFA from the National Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo (2011) and an MA from the Royal College of Art in London (2015). She has had solo and duo exhibitions at Frankfurt am Main, Berlin; Kunsthall Oslo – Munchmuseet on the Move, Oslo; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; OSL contemporary, Oslo; Malmö Konsthal; Kunsthuset Kabuso, Øystese. Selected group exhibitions include: The Hour of Reckoning, Henie Onstad Art Center, Bærum; Tempo Tempo Tempo, Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker; The Moderna Exhibition 2018, Moderna Museet, Stockholm; The Oslo Museum of Contemporary Art, Kunsthall Oslo; Nomadic Images, Museum of Applied Arts, Vilnius.

Her work is included in the permanent collections of David Roberts Art Foundation, London, Henie Onstad Art Center, Bærum, Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö, Kistefosmuseet, Jevnaker, Moderna Museet, Stockholm and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo.

Jone Kvie (b. 1971, Stavanger) currently lives and works in Naples, Italy. His practise as a sculptor is characterised by a fascination with existential questions, and by an intention to extend the notion of art towards contemplation over the world’s being, and what it means to be human in it. Our will to know and interpret the “natural world” is reflected in Kvie’s attention to cultural interpretations, archetypes and myths, and finally in his choices of themes, form, materials and titles.

Kvie has exhibited widely in Scandinavian galleries and museums, including ARoS Art Museum in Aarhus, Kunstnerforbundet (Oslo), Bergen Art Museum, The National Museum of art (Oslo), Malmö Art Museum and Göteborgs Museum of Art. He is represented in key public and private collections including Corcoran Museum (Washington DC), AROS (Aarhus); The National Museum of art (Oslo), The National Public Arts Council (Stockholm), the Art Museums in Malmö, Bergen and Stavanger, and a permanent installation at Göteborg Museum of Art. His recent solo exhibitions include OSL contemporary (2022), Vessels at the Vigeland Museum in Oslo (2017), Metamorfos at Göteborgs konstmuseum, Gothenburg, Sweden (2018) and Here, here at Stavanger Kunstmuseum (2020).

Bjarne Bare (b. 1985 in Poznań, Poland) is an internationally exhibited artist based in Los Angeles, California. Bare's approach to photography is conceptual, offering a complex, dynamic visual that stands in contrast to the ‘decisive moment’ that are often portrayed in traditional photography. He received his B.F.A. from the Academy of Fine Art Oslo (2013) and M.F.A. from UCLA, Los Angeles (2017).

Alongside his practice, Bjarne Bare maintains a profound interest in the development and current state of the photographic image, as well a theoretical curiosity concerning modes of perception in the reading of the photograph. He has been the editor of notable books on photography, including the publications Why Photography? (Skira, Milan) and New Scandinavian Photography (Black Dog Publishing, London).

Bjarne Bare’s work have been shown at Henie Onstad Art Center, Oslo; Lillehammer Art Museum, Lillehammer; UKS, Oslo; OSL contemporary, Oslo; Xiamen Three Shadows Photography Art Center, Xiamen; Estudio Miau Miau, Buenos Aires; TJ Boulting, London; UCLA Broad Art Center, Los Angeles. His artworks are in collections such as the National Museum of Art, Oslo; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker; Wienerberger Contemporary Photography Collection, Vienna; and Ekard Collection, Wassenaar.

In her practice, Ann Iren Buan (b. 1984, Stjørdal) explores the notion of decay and destruction through drawing and sculpture. Monumental, delicate, sensuous, and haptic, her work investigates the materiality of drawing in a three-dimensional sculptural expression. Her sculptures are in a continuous process of ruination, a process further reinforced by her choice of materials. Edging towards a point of collapse, the works insist on a continued existence, and are often used as elements in new artworks in a cycle of decay and renewal.

Ann Iren Buan lives and works in Oslo, Norway. She holds an MFA in Visual Art from The Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo (2011). Recent solo shows include The Vigeland Museum, Oslo; OSL contemporary and Apalazzo gallery, Brescia. Buan has participated in a number of group shows including the Drawing Triennial hosted by The Norwegian Drawing Association at Kunstnernes Hus (2019); Trondheim Kunsthall, Trondheim (2019); Palazzo Mazzarino, Palermo (2018); Stavanger Art Museum, Stavanger (2015); and The Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo (2015). Recent exhibition highlights include Kristiansand Kunsthall and OSL Contemporary (both 2021), and in 2022, Buan was a resident at Cite Internationale Des Arts, Paris.