The Russian Academy Of Arts

Norway-Russia. Pilgrimage of the Artist: Solo Show of Kjell Pahr-Iversen at the Russian Academy of Arts


12.12.2017 - 12.01.2018

Dates: December 12, 2017 – January 12, 2018
Venue: Exhibition Complex of the Russian Academy of Arts, Tsereteli Art Gallery, 21 Prechistenka street, Moscow

The City Hall of Stavanger (the Kingdom of Norway), Kjell Pahr-Iversen Foundation, Russian Academy of Arts under the support of Amare Gallery, SpareBank and Rogoland Country Council present a jubilee exhibition of Kjell Pahr-Iversen “Norway-Russia. Pilgrimage of the Artist” featuring over 70 paintings and graphic works of the artist.

Kjell Pahr-Iversen was born in Stavanger (Norway) and is one of the principle representatives of contemporary abstract art in Norway. He belongs to the second postwar generation of Norwegian artists influenced by the European avant-garde movement “COBRA”, abstract painting of the “New Paris School” and American line of abstract expressionism. For 60 years of his creative activity he continuously referred to these main directions in modernism of the middle of the 20th century. The international character of the abstraction development, the variety of methods for working with the form, color and space have determined the content and context, which became the basis for Kjell Pahr-Iversen’s own art language, style and technique.

Three central themes of his work are closely connected with the anatomy, botany and Christian culture: “Columna vertebralis” - spine, “Herbarium” – typology of plants and “Icon” – images-mediators between the heavenly and earthly worlds. Combining original features of Norwegian fine arts with the tendency of the abstraction to isolation of a live object – creation of an aesthetic object – paintings and figurative drawings presented at the exhibition are seen as a single unit, become components of an evolutionary system where the productive doubt aimed at overcoming all kinds of painful and disturbing attitudes is classified. Being in search in the space of light, color and form the artist’s key task is in the “illumination” of an abstract order of the interaction of objects, organisms, sounds and images. In addition to the series of pictures the exhibition presents a number of figurative drawings of various years.  

The exhibition “Norway-Russia. Pilgrimage of the Artist” focuses on a significant social problem of the mutual search of the public sphere of culture having the artistic and religious language understandable to everybody. Nevertheless, Kjell Pahr-Iversen does not offer the final answer leaving the geography of his pilgrimage there, where the complicity of the viewer begins.
 


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