NO MEASURE NO LIMIT installations&sculpture&drawings

NORWEGIAN SCULPTURE BIENNIAL, Vigelandmuseet 27 OCT 2011-29 JAN 2012

MOMENTUM VI, Moss  18 JUNE-2 OCT 2011

Galleri Gann, Sandnes:USTABILE VARIABLER  20 FEB-3 APR 2011

UNSTABLE VARIABLES & SOME DRAWINGS at TRAFO ARTHALL, ASKER 18 Sept. 2010

NORWEGIAN BIENNIAL OF DRAWINGS, 8.MAY 2010, MOSS
THE JUNE EXHIBIT AT KUNSTNERFORBUNDET, 10.JUNE 2010, OSLO

VALSE WAND at VOORKAMER

SCULPTURE AND OBJECTS XIII opening 25. June 2009 in Bratislava
paticipating sculptors from Norway: Philipp Dommen and Kjell Varvin

WELDED IRON & OTHER DRAWINGS
Galleri Erik Steen
KJELL VARVIN
WELDED IRON AND OTHER DRAWINGS

19.03.2009 - 03.05.2009
Kjell Varvin (born 1939) creates both drawings and paintings, but is best known for his sculptures and installations. This exhibition focuses on a large selection of sculptures made of welded steel and produced over the last fifteen years. Together with the sculptures, a number of drawings on veneer will be on show and the exhibition thereby comprises the largest presentation of Varvin's work so far.

Kjell Varvin's oeuvre has its roots in Minimalism and the artist himself emphasises how much artists such as Donald Judd, Brice Marden and Sol Lewitt have influenced him (Varvin also later worked as Lewitt's assistant). However, Varvin uses a method that has more in common with improvisation and playfulness than with stringent planning and perfection. He allows random chance, spontaneous ideas and accidents to be a part of his works, which he prefers to call "proposals" rather than "statements". This process results in drawings and sculptures that have retained elements of imperfection and therefore also their human quality.

At first sight, the sculptures may resemble classical, modernist works, but since their titles and other components refer to observations of everyday objects (as, for example, fire escapes in New York, a pinball machine or a dining table), they appear on closer examination as up-to-date works with a referential diversity that reminds us first and foremost of far younger, postmodernist artists. The exhibition has a fresh and topical quality, though consisting of works by an artist who made his debut in 1964.

Throughout his career, Kjell Varvin has exhibited extensively both in Norway and abroad. In recent years, he has participated at major exhibitions such as the Sculpture Biennial at the Vigeland Museum and the Drawing Biennial at the Artists' House in Oslo and also at joint exhibitions such as "Geometry as Image" at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York and "Go back to Start" and 0047 (all held in 2008). Varvin's last solo exhibition in Oslo was held at the Tegnerforbundet (Association of Drawers and Illustrators) in 2007.

For further information, please contact Erik Steen or Nina Paus on telephone 22 55 09 54, or visit our website on www. eriksteen.no



Duchamp said that works of art are full of secrets that are shared between artists. If you look at architecture or listen to music, there is much hidden stuff that most lay people cannot appreciate. Small details that give flavour and transmit energy and information to the adepts. The gothic cathedrals are full of mathematical science and masonic messages, and so were the paintings at that time filled with symbolic elements in forms and colours that gave the work a special direction and significance. All art through all ages contains hidden messages to the spectators; you only have to learn the language.