Fire Graskunstnere
10 Feb - 13 Mar 2011
FIRE GRASKUNSTNERE
Øivind Brune, Morten Krohg, Victor Lind og Willibald Storn
10 February - 13 March, 2011
Lautom has invited four artists from the Gras group. Gras was an artist group initiated by Willibald Storn, with a common leftist stance. In the early seventies they shared a workshop where silkscreen was the dominating technique, a graphic method that until then was little in use in Norway. Their art practice was often used to manifest a political message, in order to demonstrate against the Vietnam War or Norway's possible entry into the EEC, show support for workers on strike or work for better rights for artists.
The members expressed themselves through a wide range of styles, they did not have a common artistic agenda, though the artistic inspiration came mostly from American art from the fifties and sixties, as Pop Art, Minimalism, Hard Edge and Neo Dada, but the group's members shared political roots to the left. Although not all the members made art with a political agenda, it is the politically motivated silkscreen prints the artist group is mainly remembered for today. It is also largely here the Gras group differs from its American influences; the American Pop artists used advertisement and popular culture's visual language to create art as a reaction to the art establishment, while the Gras group adopted this visual language to convey political messages.
We have made a selection of older works as examples of the Gras-group's diversity, from Øivind Brune's formal stripes of sensitive colour nuances, to Morten Krohg's more political U.S. INRI, 1971, citing the American cardinal Francis Spellmann's statement that American troops were Christ Soldiers in Vietnam or Victor Lind's painting Untitled, 1971 which comments on the U.S. use of terror against the civilian population during the Vietnam War. Both works prove to be more up to date than we would wish for, as they mirror more recent statements and events, and remind us of how history repeats itself. We will also present recent works showing that these artists are still active and still use their artistic practice to express their social and political commitment.
Øivind Brune, Morten Krohg, Victor Lind og Willibald Storn
10 February - 13 March, 2011
Lautom has invited four artists from the Gras group. Gras was an artist group initiated by Willibald Storn, with a common leftist stance. In the early seventies they shared a workshop where silkscreen was the dominating technique, a graphic method that until then was little in use in Norway. Their art practice was often used to manifest a political message, in order to demonstrate against the Vietnam War or Norway's possible entry into the EEC, show support for workers on strike or work for better rights for artists.
The members expressed themselves through a wide range of styles, they did not have a common artistic agenda, though the artistic inspiration came mostly from American art from the fifties and sixties, as Pop Art, Minimalism, Hard Edge and Neo Dada, but the group's members shared political roots to the left. Although not all the members made art with a political agenda, it is the politically motivated silkscreen prints the artist group is mainly remembered for today. It is also largely here the Gras group differs from its American influences; the American Pop artists used advertisement and popular culture's visual language to create art as a reaction to the art establishment, while the Gras group adopted this visual language to convey political messages.
We have made a selection of older works as examples of the Gras-group's diversity, from Øivind Brune's formal stripes of sensitive colour nuances, to Morten Krohg's more political U.S. INRI, 1971, citing the American cardinal Francis Spellmann's statement that American troops were Christ Soldiers in Vietnam or Victor Lind's painting Untitled, 1971 which comments on the U.S. use of terror against the civilian population during the Vietnam War. Both works prove to be more up to date than we would wish for, as they mirror more recent statements and events, and remind us of how history repeats itself. We will also present recent works showing that these artists are still active and still use their artistic practice to express their social and political commitment.