“To succeed as an art collector you have to be obsessed, and then you have to be early…” says Erling Kagge. He is known not only as a passionate art collector, but also as both a polar explorer and a publisher. And early on, he really always has been. If there is one thing that characterizes Kagge as a collector, it is precisely his courage to bet on young, unestablished artists. As the adventurer he is otherwise in life, he has probably always liked to operate with a certain risk in the art market, and he has never stuck with art consultants or the like. Over the past two decades, his lush and rigorous collection has gradually grown. There are many wonderful juxtapositions between Kagge’s rich selection of contemporary art, and KODE’s extensive historical collections. Kuzma has unearthed works from the magazine that have not been shown for a long time and which are fantastic to see. Textile artist Synnøve Anker Aurdal (1908–2000) shows her rich and varied play of colours, juxtaposed against fierce, expressive paintings by the Danish painter Asger Jorn from Kagge’s collection. Photo: Dag Fosse/Kode Highlights in a row Now a large selection of works from the Kagge collection is presented, expertly woven together with treasures from Kode’s rich magazines. The exhibition is very extensive, and fills both the Rasmus Meyer building and the Permanenten. The well-reputed curator Marta Kuzma has made the selection. There are so many wonderful highlights from both Kagge’s and KODE’s collections in this exhibition that it is difficult to choose where to start. That’s why I might as well start with the beginning: The first work that meets us is the American conceptual artist Ceal Floyer’s “I Wish You Were Here”. It is simply an empty postcard rack. Perhaps it is an image of emptiness. POSTCARD STAND: Floyer aligns himself with the same neo-conceptualist tradition as Gardar Eide Einarsson and Mathias Faldbakken. The well-used strategy of these artists is to start from a trivial everyday object, which at the same time refers to or cites form strategies linked to modernism or pop. In this case, it is the historical avant-garde figure Marcel Duchamp and his readymade strategy that is the reference. Like his bottle dryer, Floyer dwells here on emptiness. Photo: Kode But it also portrays the unintentional sculptural beauty of this industrially manufactured product. In addition, the project has an obvious nostalgic side: “I wish you were here” was a phrase that appeared on the old postcards of the past, when we still wrote and sent such. Romantic look at nature On my further walk through the exhibition, I find a forest photograph by Torbjørn Rødland, in between powerful, romantic landscape paintings by JC Dahl. It’s an appropriate but not particularly original juxtaposition. Rødland’s photographs draw widely on the romantic pictorial tradition. FROM KAGGE’S COLLECTION: Rødland works within what we can call a Whitman tradition. He creates photographic versions of Walt Whitman’s barbaric roar over the rooftops. It is Whitman’s credo linked to the beauty of the trivial that we see clearly delineated in Rødland. In his photographs, we see the play between something loud and everyday, something spiritual and something deeply meaningful. Perhaps the dark forest image he is represented with here would fit even better with some romanticists other than JC Dahl, for example August Cappelen or Lars Hertervig? Photo: Torbjørn Rødland In the past, for example, he has photographed a lonely, back-turned human figure surrounded by beautiful nature, with clear references to the German romantic Caspar David Friedrich, but often with a trivial and everyday element such as a Rema bag or similar, which pierces the romantic mystique. Like Rødland, the American appropriation artist Richard Prince is also joined by great Romantics from Kode’s collection. Few artists are as discussed and reviled as him. Instead of taking his own pictures, he simply photographed other people’s photographs and called them his own. In the exhibition, he is represented with an iconic work, “Untitled Cowboy” from 2003. It belongs to Kagge’s collection, and is from Prince’s most famous appropriation series. Here he has rephotographed spectacular images from a Marlboro advertisement. KAGGE’S PHOTO: Here, Richard Prince thematizes the myth of the American West, and the ultimate American masculine fantasy. Prince always related to visual culture, as a visual base from which he can pick freely. His artistry is a web of borrowed photographs, advertising images, jokes, cultural and social symbols and clichés. Prince belongs to the so-called “Picture Generation”. Photo: Richard Prince And Marta Kuzma have really brought out wonderful treasures from Kode’s magazine. A series of Käthe Kollwitz’s powerful drawings that show human distress and existential despair particularly grips me. It was also wonderful to see a selection of the towering Francisco de Goya’s graphics, juxtaposed against various contemporary artists, including Anne Imhof, who draws broad inspiration from the deep eerie atmosphere of the Spanish romantic. Another romantic highlight in the exhibition is a series of late works by Lars Hertervig. Here, for example, we can see some of his most iconic, surreal and dreamlike equestrian motifs. “TO RYTTERE”: A major highlight of the exhibition are some of Lars Hertervig’s most important works. His late dream-like images of riders that bear the message of modernism in the midst of romanticism. Photo: Kode A small point of irritation A problem with this exhibition is that the various works are not marked with title, artist or year. The idea is that you should look at the pictures instead of getting lost in text. But unfortunately that is not what happens. The rather comprehensive printed matter that you are given as a navigation tool at the entrance becomes a much bigger distraction than some small discreet nameplates would be. In any case, I myself spend a lot of effort browsing the catalogue, and am often disoriented and confused. “SEA IN STORM”: As so often with Peder Balke (1804–1887), the painting has an unreal and dreamlike feel. Over the years, his coloring became more and more ribbed and approached completely black and white. His contemporaries did not understand him at all, and at one point he therefore stopped showing his works in public altogether. With today’s eyes, we see how innovative and ahead of his time Peder Balke was. Balke is known for his expressive painting technique. With everything from a spatula, to wooden sticks, and even fingers (notice the fingerprints in the lower right corner) he smeared pure denominations on the canvas. It could be pitch black, and shiny white. With a hard brush, he “wiggled” the paint into the motif in his very own way. Photo: Kode But apart from this minor irritation, “Composition with the left hand” is a wonderful and surplus experience. Here, the curator manages in interesting ways to let the various collections “talk together” and shed new light on each other. This is an exhibition that I believe will both excite and enrich! news reviews Title: “Composition for the left hand” With: Works from the collection of Erling Kagge Place: Rasmus Meyer collections and Permanenten, Kode, Bergen Period: 16 February–9. June 2024 Curator: Marta Kuzma With works by: Anne Imhof, Francisco Goya, Peder Balke, Trisha Donnelly, Synnøve Anker Aurdal, Tauba Auerbach, Lars Hertervig, Wolfgang Tillmans, Martine Syms, Honoré Daumier, Raymond Pettibon Recommended time: 40 to 90 minutes ART COLLECTOR: Come home to Erling Kagge’s villa, where modern art abounds.
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“Composition for the left hand” by Kode, Bergen – Reviews and recommendations
