Tom Sandberg: Diptych, Kunstnernes Hus

Tom Sandberg is a prominent figure in Norwegian photography history. His distinctive and personal visual language has had great significance for both the professional photographic community and for a broad art audience. His photographs have inspired a large number of Norwegian artists and photographers across generations. So fundamental is the visual legacy of Tom Sandberg that many people experience his photographs as a kind of memorial images deeply integrated into our own memory - as imprints in black and white permanently fixed on the retina, writes Ida Kierulf, curator at Kunstnernes Hus, in her text for the exhibition . His work has also garnered international recognition through exhibitions at prestigious galleries and museums such as MoMA PS1 in New York, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris. Sandberg is also represented in a number of Scandinavian, European and American art collections.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition is curated by Tom Sandberg's friend and colleague for many years, Sune Nordgren, and Ida Kierulf. However, the idea behind the exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus came about while Sandberg was alive, and it is therefore neither intended as a conclusion nor a summary. On the contrary, the curators wanted to create an exhibition that is open, subjective and confrontational, as Sandberg himself could imagine doing it. The exhibition uses the mirrored architecture of the two skylight halls to emphasize the duality of Sandberg's artistry; the tension between the approaching and the away, between presence and absence, light and darkness. "In Tom Sandberg's artistry there is a dualism, or an ambiguity, if you like. Two anchor points that keep the image of him in balance. That is what is needed when he meets us with sincerity and confrontation. (…) Then there is the opposite, something turned the other way. His escape, the dreamy or melancholic. Sometime on the verge of demonstrative distancing", writes Sune Nordgren.

In connection with the exhibition, the art magazine Objektiv publishes a special issue about Tom Sandberg in collaboration with Kunstnernes Hus, which will also act as the exhibition's catalogue. Here we find texts and conversations by a number of actors from the art scene, including Vibeke Tandberg, Kristian Skylstad, Sigrid Lien, Tomas Espedal and Eline Mugaas.

The exhibition travels on in edited versions to the Fondazione Fotografia in Modena and the Aperture Gallery in New York.