Edvard Gran long live enthusiasm

Fotogalleriet welcomes you to the exhibition long live enthusiasm by the Norwegian artist Edvard Gran on Thursday 17. February. The title of the exhibition forms a humouristic contrast to Gran´s sober and laid-back photographic language and to his thematic approach to existential boredom and waiting. In his pictures the photographer does not perform as a hunter chasing unique moments. Boredom is the point of departure and patience is the presupposition to catch these photographic moments. Nevertheless, Gran´s pictures reveals a world filled with absurd and surprising connections which appears when only one waits long enough.

The photographs of Edvard Gran move between the controlled and the spontaneous. Subtile stagings hide behind a prosaic snapshot-esthetics. To Gran, the surroundings and his own perception of them direct which actions he might add to the situation. Nature is prominent in the photographs. The pictures convey a kind of romantic longing, a desire to reveal an order and a unity in nature, a constant search for accordance. This longing is expressed either through adding small actions in the picture space or patiently waiting for the surroundings to order themselves according to a certain logic. However, these elements of artistic curiosity and scientific interest are often reduced to an almost nervous attention to nature.

This is most clearly articulated in a series of photographs where the artist´s own hand or arm appears in the picture space. The pointing fingers organise, measure and imitate objects in nature. They search, possibly in vain, after accordance regarding form, symmetry or distance between objects. In other photographs the surroundings themselves appear to offer surprising constellations; a dog is situated in an absurd and almost disturbing connection to a garden sculpture, traces of a car breaking on a highway form a perfect, yet improbable, geometry. In addition, the exhibition presents a video work where footballs are aimlessly shot out into an open wooden landscape. A static picture soberly registers this absurd action. Gran´s photographs convey both restrained frustration and subdued enthusiasm. Gran does not seek out, he waits, and his discoveries makes for a peculiar pictorial poetry.

Edvard Gran (b. 1972) lives and works in Malmø, and is educated at the Royal Art Academy in Oslo and the Art Academy in Malmö, where he graduated in 2001. In addition, Gran has a past as a professional football player for Sandefjord, Lyn and IFK Malmö. Gran participated in Vårutstillingen at Fotogalleriet in 2002. He has participated in several solo- and group shows in the Nordic countries, but this is his first solo exhibiton in Oslo.

Pressetext

Edvard Gran "long live enthusiasm"