Edvard Munch. Worlds Within Us

Edvard Munch. Worlds Within Us
The Experimental Self. Edvard Munch’s Photography
September 6, 2019–January 19, 2020

On September 6, 2019, KODE Bergen Art Museums will launch two major exhibitions of works by Edvard Munch, Edvard Munch. Worlds Within Us and The Experimental Self. Edvard Munch’s Photography. The exhibitions aim to present the breadth of Munch’s artistic oeuvre, including painting, prints and photography, by displaying a large number of Munch’s most outstanding works. The Director of KODE Museums, Petter Snare, says that this autumn Bergen will become the world’s “Munch-capital.”

The world’s largest Munch collections meet Made possible through generous loans from the Munch Museum and the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design as well as private collectors, Edvard Munch – Worlds Within Us brings together over 150 works and photos from the world’s largest Munch collections. The exhibition explores fascinating connections and contrasts in Munch’s art and questions how our inner worlds connect with nature, culture and the people around us by addressing the common motifs of love, anxiety and death.

The title ‘Worlds Within Us’ is taken from one of Munch’s own notes: “Nothing is small nothing is great—there are Worlds within us. Small things form part of the large. Large things form part of the small—A drop of blood is a Universe with Suns at its centre and Planet. The ocean is a drop. A small part of a Body.”

Munch’s best-known works are often viewed as expressions of alienation and isolation and a fear of the masses. By using the inclusive pronoun “us” in the above quote, Munch explores the great in the small, and vice versa. This exhibition seeks to adopt the same perspective by asking the question: How is everything connected?

Edvard Munch. Worlds Within Us is presented in the recently renovated halls of the KODE Museum’s Stenersen buildings, which have been restored to their original open-plan layout of 1978. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with contributions from Munch specialists and scholars in other fields. The exhibition is curated by Line Daatland, Director of Collections and Exhibitions at KODE and Frode Sandvik, curator at KODE.

Munch selfies
The Experimental Self – Edvard Munch’s Photography looks at Munch’s exploration of photography and film as an artistic medium. In Munch’s experiments, he discovered the potential of using the camera “wrongly,” to achieve distortion, blurred motion and unusual perspectives. The results are poetic representations of Munch himself and his immediate surroundings.

The Experimental Self – Edvard Munch’s Photography is realised as a collaboration between KODE Bergen Art Museums, the Munch Museum and The American-Scandinavian Foundation and is curated by the American Munch researcher Patricia Berman.