The exhibition Amdam og Andersen + Håkon Bleken may be regarded as a total installation. Roald Andersen junior’s sculptures and Marius Amdam’s paintings come up from the floor and down again, and we are swept along, into and out of relations and roles. The exhibition is full of open-ended stories of childhood, family, home, the city, art and death. «Døden, døden, døden», (i.e. Death, death, death), as the writer Astrid Lindgren would say as an opening in her telephone conversations, just so one would get the unpleasant theme out of the way and rather talk about other things. Bearable things. Ordinary things.
Marius Amdam had a solo exhibition at Trondheim kunstmuseum in 2011. That one explored childhood, becoming an adult, entering the role of the artist, and the role of the artist in itself. In Amdam og Andersen + Håkon Bleken these are still main themes, but they are also seen in relationship to being the head of the family. It’s about close relationships, elusive roles, and about the complex feelings that may arise. One of the rooms is dedicated to Father. Another one is dedicated to Mother. One room is dedicated to the Child, and, to make things even more complicated, yet another one is dedicated to the Artist.
Trondheim kunstmuseum continually works with new and interesting ways of presenting the museum collection. This also includes Kunstgaven, a collection of works donated to the museum by Håkon Bleken in 2008. For the last years, in order to readdress these works, we have invited artists to see their own body of works in the light of Håkon Bleken’s donated works. Among others, they have been exhibited along with works by the German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann (2017), with works by Bleken’s former colleagues in Gruppe 5 (2016) and lastly, with the artist collective Tegneklubben (2018).
This time the artists Marius Amdam and Roald Andersen junior are the ones who will engage in a dialogue with Håkon Bleken’s works. Håkon Bleken’s body of work touches upon several of the same themes that Amdam and Andersen address. These three are men who are not afraid of tackling the great themes of life.
Håkon Bleken
Håkon Bleken was born in 1929 in Trondheim, and is one of our most prominent artists. Since his debut in 1951 he has had a number of exhibitions. He had his artistic breakthrough in 1971 with the series of charcoal drawings «Fragmenter fra et diktatur» (Fragments from a dictatorship). Among other places, he has exhibited at the National Gallery, and at Kunstnernes Hus. In 1978 he was Festival Artist at Bergen Kunstforening. Bleken’s works have also been shown in two retrospective exhibitions at the Henie Onstad Art Centre, the most recent one in connection with his 90th birthday in 2019, an exhibition which was later shown at Trondheim kunstmuseum. Bleken’s works have been purchased by most of the public art collections in Norway and he has received numerous awards. He is e.g. Commander of the order of St Olav.
Roald Andersen
Roald Andersen junior was born in 1971 in Stavanger. He lives and works in Kristiansand. Andersen is a self-taught visual artist and works mainly with sculpture, installation and drawing/mixed media on paper. The themes are often linked to everyday life, such as floor, beds and benches, and he challenges our conceptions of these constructions. He has exhibited works at Sørlandet’s Museum of Art (SKMU), KODE Art museums and Composers homes, Kristiansand Kunsthall and Galleri Jacob Bjørn in Aarhus, among other places. Andersen has also finished large public art projects at Q42 (Filadelfia in Kristiansand) and in Vest-Agder county council.
Marius Amdam
Marius Amdam was born in 1969 in Trondheim and finished his Master at Bergen National Academy of the Arts in 2001. Since then he has worked full time as an artist. Amdam mainly works with painting and drawing, but has also made use of many other artistic expressions. The themes are often linked to childhood, roles and relations, popular culture and death. He has had several solo exhibitions, participated in collective exhibitions and completed commissioned art projects. Amdam’s works have been bought by Trondheim kunstmuseum, St. Olavs hospital, Sør-Trøndelag county council and Arts Council Norway.
