How does 2022 look in the rearview mirror? What art events are we left with? What were the biggest surprises and disappointments? It is really difficult, there is so much that deserves to be highlighted. Perhaps the year seems so extraordinarily rich and diverse because it comes after two long years of a pandemic and partially closed museums? The year’s biggest art event: A new national gallery for art Photo: Javier Ernesto Auris Chavez / news What: The opening of the National Museum Where: Vestbanen, Oslo The undisputed highlight is easy to choose: The opening of the new National Museum on Vestbanen is not just this year’s, but the most important art event of recent decades. One thing is the beautiful, timeless architecture which, with its horizontal and inward-looking character, conveys the building’s function as a place for reflection. But above all, the opening of the museum is important because it gives us greater access to the wonderful collections that our joint art museum manages. The year’s boldest exhibition idea: Munch and black metal Photo: Ove Kvavik / The Munch Museum What: “Satyricon & Munch” Where: The Munch Museum, Oslo The fall was great. How should one connect newly composed music by black metal star Sigurd Wongraven with Edvard Munch’s pictures? It was nevertheless easy to see that there were links between Munch and Wongraven’s band Satyricon. Especially in the early phase of his artistry, Munch revolved around melancholy, anxiety, alienation and death. In a masterful way, the museum managed to intertwine art and music into a magnificent dark symphony, where they took the public on a journey through various human emotions. The year’s most spectacular art experience: Appealing to all the senses Photo: Mona Pahle Bjerke / news What: “Above Front Tears Oui Float” Where: The National Museum, Oslo In the experience work “Above Front Tears Oui Float” I wandered through a fascinating cave tunnel. There were flying grandmothers, “stone formations” shaped like fish creatures, female breasts, and male genitalia. Here, mighty boulders rose out of the mist. The French artist Laure Prouvost entwined dreams, mythologies, art historical references and harsh realities. This was a thoroughly spectacular experience. This year’s queer climax: Painful and beautiful about AIDS Photo: ØYSTEIN THORVALDSEN / HENIE ONSTAD ART CENTER What: “Every moment counts – feelings of AIDS” Where: Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Bærum Many museums and galleries took the opportunity to create exhibitions in connection with it queer cultural year 2022. Here there are many memorable exhibitions to choose from, but Henie Onstad Kunstsenter’s “Every moment counts” was the very strongest. It was an overwhelming experience to enter the exhibition, where grief, passion, fear of death and longing for beauty were gathered in a relatively small area. With corona as a backdrop, the exhibition also raised uncomfortable questions about whether the reaction time linked to the AIDS epidemic would have been faster if another demographic group had been affected. The worst scandal of the year: Costly stomach flu Photo: Statsbygg/ Manthey Kula What: The national memorial site after 22 July Where: Utøya-kaia, Hole Originally, the national memorial site for the terror on Utøya was supposed to cost NOK 40.5 million. The price tag ended at 672 million. Such an insane sum would be easier to live with if we were left with a great work of art and an important monument for the future. I’m sure that the discarded “Memory Wound” would have been. The memorial that has now been erected is seen as a sad compromise: It is flimsy and uninteresting in terms of form and has little to say to future generations. The idiom also gives some rather unfortunate associations to a building site. The infrastructure also dominates violently. The flimsy row of columns drowns in the driveway and car park. This year’s clearest trend: Women all over the world THE ARTIST AT WORK: Niki de Saint Phalle paints the sculpture “Le Monde” in 1981. Photo: © Niki Charitable Art Foundation What: Women’s wave in art life Where: Various museums at home and abroad For many decades, talked about it being the women’s turn. Nevertheless, it is only now that it is actually happening: At this year’s Venice Biennale, men only made up a scant ten percent. Here at home, virtually all major institutions have shown extensive solo exhibitions with female artists this autumn: some young, up-and-coming, others older who have unfairly fallen out of the great modernist narrative. Munch presented the young contemporary artist Apichaya Wanthiang and the painter Camille Henrot. Henie Onstad showed the rebellious late modernist Niki de Saint Phalle, at the Astrup Fearnley Museum the contemporary sculptor Rachel Harrison. Stavanger Art Museum highlighted Japanese-American Ruth Asawa, and KODE offered a wide-ranging exhibition with the artist duo Annette and Caroline Kierulf. More of this! The year’s most boring art project: Masturbation as art Photo: Peter Dean What: “Maria Pasenau: The Odder Erotica” Where: Trafo Kunsthall In The Odder Erotica, Maria Pasenau explored lonely eroticism. Maria Pasenau shows us a free, independent woman driven by desire: an active sexual subject. Through her courageous self-disclosing art project, Maria Pasenau wanted to inspire the public to masturbate through “masturbation chairs” against which one could rub one’s sex. “I hope the public will do it,” said Pasenau optimistically. Here I think she was probably disappointed. Even the most free-spirited of us probably know that we prefer to unfold the lonely (and to that extent also the twosome) eroticism in private. And what, then, would the Kunsthallen have done, if people had really taken her at her word and started satisfying themselves on these fanciful chairs? It would have become a scandal to write about in an annual summary, that! The year’s biggest surprise: Estonia’s unknown master Photo: Stanislav Stepashko / TARTU ART MUSEUM What: “Konrad Mägi – Estonia’s great painter” Where: Lillehammer Art Museum Konrad Mägi is considered one of the Baltic’s foremost artists. It is said that he single-handedly brought modernism to Estonia. All Estonians have heard of Mägi, but in the larger European art history he is forgotten. I myself had never heard the name until the Lillehammer Art Museum brought his pictures to this country. Mägi drew inspiration from a wide range of European styles and currents, at his best he was able to intertwine all these impulses into an exciting and individualized idiom. It was an enrichment to get to know this prolific and sometimes completely virtuoso artist.
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An exceptionally rich and diverse art year – Reviews and recommendations
