PwC Collection, Oslo
Nils Stærk, Copenhagen
NILS ERIK GJERDEVIK


The artistic practise of the Danish/Norwegian artist Nils Erik Gjerdevik (1962 – 2016) consisted of painting, works on paper and ceramic sculptures, as well as site specific installations including wall paintings, sculptural installations etc.

Nils Erik Gjerdevik was well known for his non-figurative paintings that challenge all the set rules and conventions of painting as a genre. He confronted our idea of how a painting should be presented through his use of peculiar formats, alternative colours and compositions rarely built around the classical notion of harmony. His paintings tend toward a more double-edged expression where seemingly divergent ideas and movement meet and become one and the same image. This practice applies to his drawings and his ceramic sculpture work as well. The sculptures and paintings function as different yet closely related points of entry into Gjerdevik’s artistic thought, and almost always come together as one expression when exhibited.

His focus and field of interest was what you could call the preconditions and potential of the non-figurative. His works almost take on the character of a survey of the diverse systems of abstractions in art history - the linear structures of constructivism, meandering arabesques of the art nouveau, the grid system of minimalism, the visual phenomenons of op art, as well as patterns and styles of pop art. In his works Gjerdevik broke with the classical principles of composition; the distinctions between foreground and background is blurred, and the perspective seems to point both in to and out of the painting. He was flirting with a psychedelic architectural universe, where gravity was eliminated and impossible meetings between subjects, themes, styles, and techniques occurs. Gjerdevik always incorporated the architectonic as a principle in his work, whether it was the three-dimensional sculpture or the two-dimensional painting.