We are proud to announce that our artist Mattias Härenstam is nominated for this years Lorck Schive Art Prize, together with Knut Henrik Henriksen, Lars Laumann and Vibeke Tandberg. The art prize is one of the most prestigious in Norway, and is a collaboration between Christian Lorck Schive and Spouse Trust and Trondheim Art Museum.
The Lorck Schive Art Prize was founded in order to generate debate and interest around contemporary art, by honouring outstanding artists, and is handed out every second year. The prize is one of the world’s largest, with apx 56 000 EURO to the winner and 16 700 EURO going to each of the other nominees. The price exhibition can be seen at Trondheim Art Museum from October 1, 2017.
This is what the board of the thrust say about the nominees:
“Each of the four artists is nominated on the basis of individual, strong artistic oeuvres. The materials they are working with span a broad range, stone, wood, text, photographs, films, sound. They share a willingness to explore the paradoxical destruction in the act of creating. A work of art is necessarily destruction, transformation and dissolution before synthesis. Artistic practice is the willingness to erase comfortable pictures, beautiful scenarios and safe framework. It is also bruises, friction and uncertainty. Perhaps this kind of practice is what connects the four nominated artists, a practice they operate in different ways.
Mattias Härenstam connects morbid humour with the paradoxical powerlessness and savage energy in desire and longing. He treats the ordinary, pleasant life in the suburb as a script made for David Lynch. His own films have a similar undercurrent of turmoil and possible disaster. The sculptures form disturbing tableaux, with polished surfaces in stone and wood perforated with holes where eyes, teeth and fluid leak out. Härenstam exposes gaps where the sinister passes, where imagination takes over and the sound reasoning is letting go.
Mattias Härenstam (b. 1971 in Sweden) is a graduate of Western Norway’s Art Academy in Bergen and Städelsschule, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt am Main. Härenstam has held numerous solo exhibitions, including places like the Vigeland Museum in 2016, Kunstnerforbundet in 2012 and Gallery UKS in 2009. In 2013, his short film Reconstruction was nominated for an Amanda, a Norwegian film award. In November, Härenstam will participate at an exhibition at Stavanger Art Museum with new works.
The Lorck Schive Art Prize is granted by the Lorck Schive and Spouse Trust, which were established in 1878 by Christian Lorck Schive and his wife Marine Sophie Wille. The revenues come from land leases in Trondheim, and the trust is therefore both commercially and politically independent. This is the third year that the prize will be awarded in its present form.”
View works by Härenstam in our gallery shop
