Oystein Aasan

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Oystein Aasan

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Untitled (PLASTIK), 2011. Installation view Thierry Goldberg, NYC

More images: www.artnews.org/oysteinaasan

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Øystein Aasan
LA VITRINE 24 rue Moret, December 17–February 20
Norwegian artist Øystein Aasan has something up his sleeve: controlled explosions of images or text that stealthily disarm their reader. Aasan divides his source materials into small squares, spaced at small intervals, as if a grid of negative space has wedged apart the image. In “Double Trouble,” his modest presentation at La Vitrine, a poster of Alfred Werker’s 1953 Devil’s Canyon has been thusly “pixelated” and affixed to Alu-Dibond panels. In Display Unit (UT UT UT), 2007, the gridded content is a phrase from Finnegans Wake. Printed on slanted shelves in a “display unit” lined with mirror paper, the isolated characters seem to float off into their reflections, making reading a feat of memory to battle the Babel in Joyce’s babble. The Tower of Babel, incidentally, is a reference Aasan attributes to his ongoing work and source archive Never ending memory, which is absent from the exhibition but adumbrated by two other works in the show: Double Trouble, 2009, resembles a series of long troughs placed vertically, echoing the hand-built drawers that house the archive. Memory Game, 2009, is a short sequence of slides in which blanks alternate with selections from these files, photographed together in a vitrine, like cards in the eponymous game. The opening moments of Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983) come to mind—“the image of happiness” intercut with black leader—as does the pliable narrative promise of the photographs in W. G. Sebald’s novels.
There is something forlorn about this tribute to memory, a faculty under siege; the anachronistic efforts of the pastime seem to buckle under Aasan’s crisp aesthetic, which itself embraces the currently ubiquitous look of nostalgia. Just like images in the children’s game of Memory, Aasan’s materials—plywood, MDF, anonymous photos, and imagery appropriated from old B-grade culture—pop up all over the place these days. That he can nonetheless invest them with pathos and surprise makes his memory game look indeed like a magic trick.
Johanna Fiduccia

Oystein Aasan

1977 born in Kristiansand, Norway

Lives and works in Berlin/New York, United States

Education

1999- 2003. Statens Håndverks og Kunstindustrihøyskole (National Collage of Art and Design),
Fine Arts Department.

Grants

2012 ISCP Residency New York, one year
2011 Support, OCA, Office for contemporary Art, Oslo
2010 Support, OCA, Office for contemporary Art, Oslo
2010 1 year working grant, Norway
2009 Vest Agder Kunstnerstipend
2009 Support, OCA, Office for contemporary Art, Oslo
2009 One-year working grant, Norway
2008 Support, Arts Council Norway
2007 Support, OCA, Office of Contemporary Art Norway
2007 Pollock-Krassner Foundation, New York
2007 Two-year working grant Norway
2007 Support, Arts Council Norway
2006 Support, Arts Council Norway
2006 Support, OCA, Office of Contemporary Art Norway
2006 Support, OCA, Office of Contemporary Art Norway
2005 Christian Lorch Schive and Wife Grant, Norway
2005 Support, OCA, Office of Contemporary Art Norway
2004 Sleipnir travel grant, NIFCA
2004 Support, OCA, Office of Contemporary Art Norway
2004 Billedkunstnerenes Hjelpefond, Norway
2003 Norwegian Shipping Unions Award, with Jan Christensen
2003 Høstutstillingsprisen, with Jan Christensen
2003 Sleipnir travel grant, NIFCA (2)

Solo Exhibitions

2013 Gemälde Galerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
2012 NADA, Miami with Lautom
2011 Sørlandets Kunst Museum, Kristiansand Norway
2011 Gallery Weekend, PSM, Berlin,
2011 FORDE, Geneva
2011 Lautom Contemporary, Oslo
2010 Galerie Katharina Bittel, Hamburg
2010 Kunstverein Arnsberg 2009 La Vitrine, Paris
2008 Lounge Project, Art Forum Berlin
2008 PSM, Berlin
2008 Galerie Katharina Bittel, Hamburg
2008 Lautom Contemporary, Oslo
2007 Lautom Contemporary, Oslo
2006 Korridor, Berlin
2006 Rogaland Art Center, Stavanger

Group Exhibitions

2013 "Louis Kahn", The National Museum of Arts, Oslo
2012 "Tailgates and Substitutes", Thierry Goldberg, NYC
2011 “Totem and Taboo”, Museum Quartier Vienna,
2011 Momentum Biennial, Moss,
2011 “Berlin-Paris”, with PSM at Galerie Dohyanglee, Paris
2010 “Untitled, 2010”, Lautom Contemporary, Oslo
2010 “Zero Budget Biennial”, performance program, Berlin
2010 “Les Interlocuteurs”, La Vitrine Paris
2010 “Les Interlocuteurs” Les Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse
2010 “The Kindness of Cronies”, Berlin
2010 “Second Scenario”, La Box, Bourges, France
2010 Frauenhofer Institut, Berlin
2009 “The foreign minister will be present...”, Lautom Contemporary, Oslo 2009 Art Forum Berlin, with Galerie Katharina Bittel
2009 “Grid and Line”, Galerie Katharina Bittel, Hamburg
2009 Liste, Basel, with Lautom Contemporary
2008 “Lights on”, Astrup Fearnley Museum for Kunst, Oslo
2008 “White Nights/Knights”, Jones Gallery, Cologne, Curated by Andreas Schlaegel
2008 “Holiday in Arcadia”, Lydgalleriet, Bergen, Curated by Erlend Hammer 2008 “Der Autorität”, Kunstverein Arnsberg, Curated by Vlado Velkov
2008 “The Repetition of Signs”, Altefabrik, Rapperswil, Switzerland
2008 “Representations”, D21, Leipzig, curated by Leif Magne Tangen
2007 Fotoflatfiling, Pierogi Leipzig 2007 Pierogi Flatfiling, Artnews Project Berlin
2007 “Bare Ord”, Lautom Contemporary, Oslo, curated by Leif Magne Tangen
2006 “Klartext Berlin”, Kunstraum NOE, Vienna, curated by Raimar Stange 2006 “Summer Destruction show”, Seilduksfabrikken, Oslo, curated by Günter Reski
2006 Bokaktig, Fotogalleriet, Oslo 2006 “Every Story tells a Picture”, Sparwasser HQ, Berlin, curated by Michael Baers
2006 “Location Shots”, Galerie Erna Hecey, Brussels, curated by Raimar Stange
2006 Liverpool Biennale
2005 “Water Event”, with Yoko Ono, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, curated by H. U. Obrist
2005 “10 x 10”, Sørlandet Art Museum, Kristiansand Norway
2005 “Pictures are the problem”, Pelham Art Center, NYC, curated by Walead Beshty
2005 “Water Event”, Migros Museum, Zürich, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist
2005 “Boundless”, Stenersenmuseet Oslo and National Touring Exhibition Norway
2005 Salong 100, Oslo
2005 The Color and the Shape, Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin
2004 Ce qui reste, FRAC Bretage, Rennes, curated by Bettina Klein

Collections

Sørlandets Art Museum, Norway
The National Museum of Arts, Norway

Oystein Aasan

Swinemunder str 121
10435 Berlin

oystein.aasan@gmail.com
http://lmt.vitakuben.org/download/oystein/