BGE is honored to present “Veien videre?”, our third solo exhibition by national master Håkon Bleken, one of Norway’s most prominent contemporary artists over the past four decades. The exhibition consists of 26 works on canvas, all created within the past four years.
Håkon Bleken celebrated his 93rd birthday earlier this year, and still, his works continue to have a great influence on the Norwegian contemporary art scene, marked by artistic courage and political conscience. He is what can be described as a literary painter, and his works often revolve around close and local subjects such as current matters from Norway or issues concerning his Trondheim. His works tell stories; of injustice, of victory and of loss. By continuously exposing his art to present topics, Bleken has, through a long oeuvre, avoided getting stuck in established patterns. The seriousness of life in his works are often contrasted with the joy of his artistic challenges, and his works have gradually become both furthermore dynamic and expressive, applied with mature and energetic brush strokes.
Bleken implements a wide range of techniques and themes, showing his outstanding ability to create unifying symbols and a universal artistic language, whether it is self-portraits, landscapes or portraits of people surrounding him. It is not easy to classify Bleken’s artistic oeuvre, as he works with a range of media: painting, coal drawing, collage, stained glass, different graphic methods, and book illustrations. Yet, he is best known for his paintings, which vary between carefully detailed composed pieces and intelligent simplicity in abstractionism. His main subjects are landscapes and portraits. In his later work, he has been using modernist cubistic collage, as shown in “Veien videre?”, often working in dialog with old traditions and historical cultural expressions.
The exhibition opening will be on Wednesday, January 19th, at 6 pm. The show will last until Wednesday, 16th of February.