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Photo: Nadia Caroline Andersen/TKM.
The human form is perhaps the most common motif in our collection and maybe in all of western art. By crowding together sculpture busts, figure studies, religious paintings and portraits in this space, reminiscent of a museum’s storage room, Tebus lets us see the artworks at rest, as they really are, without the make-up of curation and exhibition techniques. He also reminds us that what we have seen in this exhibition is less than five percent of the museum’s collection.
In his exhibition Collection at Trondheim kunstmuseum in 2015, Martin Tebus arranged the museum’s collection according to 18 different themes. Some themes mimicked a conceptual, abstract approach - Food in Context and Interiors and How to Use Them - some grouped artworks based on details or elements in them - Full Moon in Motion and The Year of the Horse - others created a kind of staged interiors using artworks - Street Life and Open Studio - and yet others showed the number and diversity of large categories in our collection such as figure painting and portraiture - Looks and Postures - and landscapes in Hiking and The River.
Characteristics of Martin Tebus’s approach are a perceptive eye for content and visual elements, and a playful irreverence in staging new uses, categories and scenarios for the artworks.
