Rune Olsen's Page

Website

www.runeolsen.net

Relationship status

married

College / University

Goldsmiths College, London, UK

Program

Postgraduate Diploma

Graduation

16 September 1999

Member type

Artist

If you're an artist, what kind of art do you make?

Sculpture

I am...

Rune Olsen is a Norwegian artist living in New York. Since his first solo show in 1997 at UKS (Norway) he has exhibited in numerous galleries and museums throughout the USA and Europe, including Bronx Museum (NY 2001), Islip Art Museum (NY 2002), Jones Center for Contemporary Art (TX 2004), Aljira Center for Contemporary Art (NJ 2004) and, Smack Mellon and Exit Art (NY 2005). His life-size figurative sculptures examine the interplay among desire, power structures and society, and were in 2005 exhibited at the Istanbul Biennial. His work has been reviewed in Art Forum, Sculpture Magazine, Boston Globe, Austin Chronicle, New York Times, and Star Ledger. Rune Olsen has won 11 awards from The Norwegian Government, including a distinguished Three-year work grant for young emerging artists. He has been awarded the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship, a studio residency with Artist Alliance in New York and a place at the renowned Art Omi International Artists Residency. Rune Olsen had a solo show with Samson Projects in 2007, and will in 2008 be participating in the Norwegian Drawing Biennial at Kunstnernes Hus.

About my artwork

Interweaving personal narrative with social issues my life-size sculptures of figures and animals are obsessively taped and violently drawn. I started using the basic materials of newspaper and tape in grad school at Goldsmiths. Fascinated by Freud’s writing on the Uncanny (Das Unheimliche,) I was looking for materials that was familiar, cheap and easily malleable. These materials I refer to as social materials; these are materials that anybody can easily obtain and use with minimal production cost manipulating using simple tools. The immediacy of newspaper, tape and pencil is very attractive. The only non-social-materials I use are the glass eyes that are hand painted in Germany to look like my eyes. This is where socialism and narcissism comes together in an alluring combination. Seduction is an important tool in the creation and success of my sculpture together with experiencing the sculptures physical presence. Though we can live in our minds, as an animal the physical is vastly more exciting. It can hit below the belt, arouse our urges, and hijack our minds.

The centre of the artworld is

nowhere and everywhere

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