He was the bodybuilder who went to a monastery, the young man who wandered around the Frogner stadium with mirrored glasses that reflected his surroundings and wheeled a strange box chair on wheels. He was the artist who traveled to Australia to represent Norway at a prestigious biennale, but was rejected on arrival – and who managed to improvise a work on the spot. Hilmar Fredriksen is an artist completely out of the ordinary. An important concept and performance pioneer in Norwegian art history. KLOSTER AND BODYBUILDER: Hilmar Fredriksen is an exceptionally diverse character. Alongside his art education, he has been active in bodybuilding, and has also been a novice in a monastery. For several years he lived together with five monastery brothers at Vallset in Stange. Photo: Camilla Damgård / Lillehammer Kunstmuseum But with his combination of something spiritual and something humorous, he stands out quite clearly from other conceptual and process artists in Norway. Now he is current with a large retrospective exhibition at Lillehammer Art Museum. And it’s about time. Not since 2006 has he been presented with a major museum exhibition. Shockingly, he was also not included when the National Museum in 2016 presented Norwegian conceptual art with the exhibition “Silent Revolt”. Beating the big drum It therefore makes me so happy that Lillehammer Art Museum is now really beating the big drum and filling its entire beautiful Snøhetta building to the brim with Hilmar Fredriksen’s rich world of form and thought. His most famous work “Communikasjonstykke” has naturally been given its central place, together with Tom Sandberg’s fantastic black and white photographs of the young Fredriksen strolling around with, or sitting inside, his enigmatic coffin on wheels. HIS MOST FAMOUS: “Communication piece” consists of a specially made box designed in veneer with an open slot in the front, placed on pram wheels and with a handle at the back. Photo: The National Museum/Annar Bjørgli Tom Sandberg’s fantastic photographs of the performance project related to this iconic object. Photo: Tom Sandberg The work is about different ways of being in the world. The introverted person who sits inside the carriage and looks out, and the extroverted person is in free movement, but does not see the outside world through his mirror glasses. Photo: Tom Sandberg Hilmar Fredriksen’s iconic index card is also unfolded to full width. This is a collection of small paintings that he started making in the 1980s. In the artist’s own words, it is “…a memory bank from the wanderings of consciousness.”. Here color theory, optical form experiments, everyday musings and big spiritual questions meet. CARTOGRAPHY: An artistic phenomenon has, however, been fixed in his artistry for almost 40 years: the Kartotekt. The maps are small paintings on cardboard plates and in the 1980s he made over 1,000 of these small paintings. The map sheets are an important part of Fredriksen’s artistic memory and reservoir of ideas. It is the first time that so many of the map sheets are shown together. Here we see an overview of the entire map together. The way these Kartotek images are composed together is incredibly skillfully done. Pure panic Another iconic work in the exhibition is “Livets vann”. Fredriksen probably conceived the idea for this concept work in sheer panic upon arrival at the Sydney Biennale in 1990, when he was told by art chief René Block that the small works he had carried with him in his luggage could not be included in the exhibition. “LIFE’S WATER”: In sheer panic, Fredriksen created this with the help of a wall text, an old fridge and a fan oven. Photo: The National Museum Hilmar Fredriksen then recreated a Norse creation myth with the help of a wall text, an old refrigerator and a fan oven. It was the myth of the earth that was created out of the dark throat Ginnungagapet. With the simplest tools, he created a circuit of ice, meltwater and condensation. Obsessed Hilmar Fredriksen is obsessed with boxes and cavities. Throughout his artistry, he has created all kinds of possible boxes and rooms with small and large holes and openings: everything from tiny circles of light to larger holes where you can, for example, stick your head in. The high hall on the museum’s first floor is filled with all kinds of sculptures and box installations of various kinds. “STABLE SCULPTURE II” Fredriksen is also known for his small wall objects and pictures created from leftover material such as veneer, cardboard or metal. Photo: THE NATIONAL MUSEUM But what exactly makes this conceptual art and not late modernist abstraction? It is not about an underlying idea, or a theoretical message, there is little of that with Fredriksen. He works intuitively and without any plan. But still, it is conceptual art in the sense that the object is like visual thoughts; as a type of physical, concrete philosophy. Often the viewer is also invited into the formation of opinions. In an installation, for example, we can climb up a ladder and stick our heads into a kind of loft where everything is shiny blue. It really is quite lovely and soothing to rest your head against the blue color. Of course, until another visitor suddenly appears nearby. But maybe it’s a fun way to meet new people? A FUN WAY TO MEET NEW PEOPLE?: Here we see Hilmar Fredriksen during the first presentation of this work in Bergen in 1994. In many of Fredriksen’s projects, ancient and mythical notions are central, such as in the project “Fruktbarhetsritualene” from 1979 where he sowed grass on a spot shaped like a human body, like a picture of the eternal circle of life Perhaps it is not so strange that here in our provincial corner of the global art world we do not quite understand what format Hilmar Fredriksen has. But it is sad that a greater effort has not been made to launch him internationally. “I-BOX”: In the exhibition, we can enter a shiny yellow, tiled room. ON THE INSIDE: It is interesting to experience the strong influence of colors on us; how different it is, for example, to stand in this shrill yellow room than it is to lean in. There are few projects in Norwegian art history that are as conceptually rich and as strong in terms of form at the same time as Hilmar Fredriksen’s. When I try to describe his work I always come back to a quote from my own old grandfather André Bjerke; I think of his project as a “…sacred common game”. news reviewer Title: “Eye – gaze” Artist: Hilmar Fredriksen Curator: Audun Eckhoff Location: Lillehammer Art Museum Time: until 3 March 2024 Estimated time: 40 – 60 minutes
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“Hilmar Fredriksen. Eye-Glance” at Lillehammer Art Museum – Reviews and recommendations
