This page is a kind of scrap book with some selected reviews and articles from the press.




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07.10.2023
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25.04.2023
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
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07.06.2022
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08.03.2022
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16.06.2021
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24.07.2019
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2017. Exhibition: «Lars Strandh at Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TE, USA
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15.03.2015
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2015. Exhibition: «Lars Strandh à l´honneur chez Radial», Radial Art Contemporain, Strasbourg, France
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2014. Exhibition: «Night Visions» (duo exhibition) at Radial Art Contemporain, Strasbourg, France
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Strasbourg Art Photography, 2014. Exhibition: «Night Visions» (duo exhibition) at Radial Art Contemporain, Strasbourg, France

Peindre hors motifs
La galerie Radial Art Contemporain à Strasbourg nous invite à voir ou à revoir les oeuvres atypiques de Lars Strandh, un artiste Suédois (mais installé en Norvège à Oslo), qui s’est entièrement consacré, ces dernières années, à un étonnant et beau travai. Lars Strandh fait dans le détail, mais pas celui que l’on croit. Il s’attache à travailler des lignes horizontales, dans un immense labeur, faites à la main et composées dans un champ chromatique directement sur la toile. La minutie et le répétitif pourraient rendre sa peinture ennuyeuse. Absence de motifs, absence de sujets ? En réalité, ces absences sont tout le contraire. Nous nous trouvons avec lui dans une dimension picturale qui fait de sa peinture une nouvelle esthétique. L’artiste a su créer, en dehors de son style, un nouveau contenu visuel et c’est là aussi son oeuvre. Nous avons assez longuement parlé avec Lars Strandh, lors du vernissage chez Radial Art Contemporain, de sa technique, de ses motivations, de sa conception de l’art, et nous avons découvert un personnage humble, bien dans sa peau, alors que ses toiles donneraient, dans une première approche, une impression presque schizophrène de l’artiste. Ces lignes, ces couleurs ne sont pas hasardeuses ni le résultat d’une quelconque folie. Le tout est beau et remarquable.








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Nashville Scene, 2014. Exhibition: «Trace Elements» (solo exhibition) at Zeitgeist Gallery Nashville, TE USA

'March crawl' may sound like an oxymoron, but this month's First Saturday really moves 
Crawl Space: Cool Against the Cold
by JOE NOLAN
February 27, 2014

Zeitgeist Gallery opens two new shows at the crawl, including an exhibit by one of the gallery's best painters. Lars Strandh's big canvases masquerade as monochromatic geometric paintings, but are, in fact, composed of a spectrum of hues applied in hundreds of thin, repetitive horizontal stripes. Strandh's work recalls several art movements — Op art, trompe l'oeil painting, neoplasticism and minimalism — and they manage to be at once flat and cool, sensuous and sexy. Now that Zeitgeist boasts a large gallery space that allows viewers to see Strandh's work both up-close and from a distance, these beauties have never looked better. The show will also feature an installation of broken vinyl records from Phillip Andrew Lewis and Kevin Cooley.







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Nashville Arts, 2014. Exhibition: Medium’s Session at Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville TE, USA

THE MEDIUM’S SESSION AT ZEITGEIST
by Joe Nolan
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Lars Strandh, Untitled (Orange), 2008, Acrylic on canvas, 63 x 63

The Medium’s Session at Zeitgeist is organized by gallery artist Patrick DeGuira. A sharp, smart collection of work, the exhibition includes offerings from familiar locals as well as artists from Chattanooga, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Oslo. The title of the show conjures images of turn-of-the-twentieth-century spiritualism with its seances and otherworldly spirits, and some of the works in the exhibit play with their own versions of magical misdirection.
Kevin Cooley and Phillip Andrew Lewis’ We Can Break Through is a video featuring two box fans in a room, hanging from the ceiling by invisible wires. The video fades in to a shot of both fans whirring, their cords connected to a power strip below them. The fans twist and spin—sometimes in a tandem dance, sometimes on a collision course. Viewers eventually accept that the fans are actually levitating, and their mutual movements begin to imply a conversational cadence. It’s a simple idea with elegant results, and this piece offers the most spot-on interpretation of the exhibition’s overall themes.

Frances Trombly’s Box (Broward Paper and Packaging) and Box (Paper Mart) look like collapsed cardboard boxes—complete with mailing labels, postage marks, and Sharpie scrawl. They’re displayed lying directly on the gallery floor. At the show’s opening, my artist friend walked right on top of the pieces only to realize the boxes are handwoven fabric, and all of the marks and writing are embroidered by the artist. Technically deft and subversively silly, Miss Trombly plays the Fool in the Medium tarot deck.
Lars Strandh’s paintings are technical and tactile like Trombly’s work, but they also play with perception in the same way that Break Through makes you believe that fans can fly. From fifteen feet away Strandh’s Untitled (Orange) looks like a large, orange, acrylic painting on linen. Up close, the surface is covered with an intense succession of horizontal stripes of multiple colors that the eye merely interprets as orange. The title claims one thing, but the surface claims another. Like a great magic trick or a hopeful divination, this painting—and this exhibition—encourage the best kind of disbelief.






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KULTURpur 2013. Exhibition: The Assemblance of Presence, Galerie Wenger, Zurich, Schwitzerland

31.08.2013 - 09.11.2013
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Neue Arbeiten von Russell Maltz, John Monteith, Lars Strandh und Mark Williams

Die Gruppenausstellung in der Galerie Wenger vereint vier Künstler aus den USA und Norwegen, die alle eine zeitgenössische geometrisch - abstrakte Formensprache sprechen und die bald hundertjährige Geschichte der konstruktiven Kunst, die 1915 mit Kasimir Malewitschs Bildikone Das Schwarze Quadrat ihren Anfang nahm, weiterentwickeln . The Assemblance of Presence - der Ausstellungstitel verweist darauf, dass hier vier ganz unterschiedliche vitale Formulierungen konstruktiver Gegenwartskunst zusammentreffen.

Mark Williams (*1950 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; lebt in New York) schafft mit den Grundelementen der geometrischen Kunst - der Vertikalen, der Horizontalen und der rechteckigen Fläche - feinfühlig austarierte Kompositionen. Die Strenge der Geometrie bricht er, indem er das Malerische zur Wirkung bringt. So ist das Handwerkliche des Malens durch sichtbare Pinselstriche oder durchschimmernde Far b schichten präsent. Malerisch ist auch die Farbpalette, die nebst Schwarz - und Weissabstufungen fein abgestimmte Farbtöne wie dunkles Weinrot, erdiges Orange oder tiefes Blau enthält. Die Verwendung von Öl - , Acryl - , Alkyd - oder Emailfarbe erlaubt Mark Williams, die Oberflächenwirkungen zu variieren.

Lars Strandh (* 1961 in Göteborg, Schweden; lebt in Oslo) beschäftigt sich seit mehr als einem Jahrzehnt mit der monochromen Bildfläche, der radikalsten Form konstruktiver Kunst. Sein Hauptanliegen ist die Farbe, ihr Wesen und ihre Erscheinung. Aus Distanz betrachtet wirken seine Bilder ein farbig, beim Nähertreten lösen sich die gleichmässigen Flächen in Striche unterschied licher Farbnuancen auf. In einem zeitintensiven, meditativen Prozess setzt der Künstler Strich um Strich, Schicht um Schicht, den Pinsel stets horizontal führend. Die waagrechte Bildstruktur weckt leise Erinn e rungen an Landschafts - und Seestücke, die den Betrachter dazu verführen, gedanklich in die Farbräume zu versinken. Lars Strandh gelingt es, die Monochromie mit Imagination und Empfindung zu beseelen.

Russell Maltz (*1952 in Brooklyn, NY; lebt in New York) entwickelt Konzepte für künstlerische Interventionen und Installationen, die mit der konstruktiven Kunst die Vorliebe für geometrische Strukturen teilen. Als Werkstoffe verwendet er Baumaterialien. Durch Stapeln, Bündeln und Bemalen von Betonschalsteinen, Holzlatten oder Rohren inszeniert er Kunst an oft unerwarteten Orten im öffentlichen Raum. Der Identitätswechsel der Materialien vom trivialen Baustoff zum bedeutungsvollen Kunstwerk wirft die Frage auf, wo die Grenze zwischen Gewöhnlichem und Kunst liegt. Die Absichten des Künstlers spiegeln sich auch in den Wandobjekten aus gestapelten und mit Farbfeldern markierten Sperrholzplatten. An einem Metal l stift aufgehängt, finden sie ihr Gleichgewicht von selbst und bilden als E n semble vielschichtige geometrische Körper. Und sie entfalten die für Russell Maltz‘ Kunst charakteristische Wirkung: roh, schnörkellos und überraschend.

John Monteith (*1973 in Newmarket, Ontario, Kanada; lebt in Berlin ) interessieren urbane Räume mit ihrer schnelllebigen Lebensweise, die er mitunter auf seinen zahlreichen Reisen - wie jüngst nach China, Vietnam oder Nordkorea - untersucht. Diese inspirierten auch seine Bildserie (de)construction (re)construction , die auf Architekturfotografien basiert, die der Künstler in geballte konstruktive Ölmalerei übersetzt. Er legt mehrere mit geometrischen Formen bemalte Transparentpapiere übereinander, wodurch sich Verschiebungen, Auffächerungen und Rotationen ergeben. Dynamische Raumcollagen entstehen. Die hochpräzise Malweise und pastellenen Farbnuancen machen die Bilder zu delikaten Zeugnissen einer neuen Gene ration geometrischer Malerei.






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Culturement, 2012. Exhibition: «Simplicité complexe» (solo exhibition) at Radial Art Contemporain, Strasbourg, France
Des tableaux d’une simplicité complexe!
Publié le mars 13, 2012 par baechlercharlotte

A travers la vitrine du Radial Art Contemporain, les passants sont intrigués par des tableaux de couleurs unis. Rien d’impressionnant vu d’ici, mais qu’ils se détrompent, les œuvres du suédois de Lars Strandh regorgent de traits parfaitement tracés et de reflets de couleurs étonnants. Coze a rencontré pour vous cet artiste, lors du vernissage de son exposition, vendredi soir.
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Pour la premièrement fois en France – et en avant-première à Strasbourg ! – Lars Strandh propose ses peintures à travers l’exposition « simplicité complexe », qui tire son nom de l’observation que les visiteurs font face à ses œuvres. « En observant mes tableaux à une certaine distance, on peut les percevoir comme des monochromes, mais en s’en rapprochant, il y a tout un ensemble de couleurs, de pigments et de nuances dans et autour de la teinte principale ainsi qu’une diversité de surfaces mates et brillantes. La simplicité est en fait très complexe », explique-t-il. Des tableaux au large panel de couleurs et un choix illimité de tailles, qu’il peint en une à deux semaines. « C’est surtout la peinture en elle-même qui me dit quand le tableau est terminé », dévoile l’artiste. Les amateurs d’art resteront quand même stupéfaits devant ces rectangles colorés, à se demander quel en est le message caché. Lars Strandh nous en donne la réponse, pour le plus grand bonheur de notre compréhension. « Take your time ! », répond-il du tac au tac. Et entre d’autres mots, il expliquera que « sur chaque toile, il y a 25 à 30 couches de peinture, et, à chaque fois, ce sont des tranches de vie. Avec ce geste répétitif, (ndlr : des lignes très serrées de gauche à droite) on voit apparaître les différentes épaisseurs, on peut voir sans cesse dans le passé. C’est une expérience de vie, comme un testament à chaque peinture ». Et ces œuvres, on peut les interpréter différemment. « Chacun y voit ce qu’il veut, chacun à sa propre perception des couleurs. Par exemple, pour certains, ce tableau vert leur rappellera une chambre d’hôpital, pour d’autres la couleur du salon de leur grand-mère. C’est un réel travail de mémoire », souligne-t-il.
Lars Strandh, c’est aussi un artiste très ouvert et sympathique, qui va être souvent à l’honneur à la galerie du Radial. En effet, cette dernière, située quai Turckheim, fonctionne avec des artistes permanents. L’avantage ? « Je pense que le meilleur service que l’on peut rendre à un artiste, c’est de le suivre, de faire avec lui une collaboration qui dure. Ici, on évite d’avoir un regard toujours neuf,on préfère proposer des artistes rarement ou pas du tout exposés en France, et de les suivre tout au long de leur ascension », explique Fredd Croizer. Un espace collectionneur qui existe depuis un an et demi, avec une dizaine d’artistes à l’honneur chaque jour. Pour ceux qui auraient manqué le vernissage de « simplicité complexe » en présence de l’artiste vendredi, Radial Art Contemporain maintient l’exposition jusqu’au 22 avril. Alors fans de l’art figuratif, des couleurs vives ou même de l’artiste en lui-même, direction la galerie dès maintenant !






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Nashville Scen, 2009. Exhibition: New Works on Linen (solo exhibition) at Zeitgeist Gallery Nashville, TE USA
With a painstaking technique and an inventive approach to color, Lars Strandh creates paintings that are far more than first meets the eye 
By DAVID MADDOX December 10, 2009
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Lars Strandh: New Works on Linen Through Dec. 19 at Zeitgeist

When art critic James Elkins spoke at Lipscomb in 2006 about visual culture in the university, he made the comment that visual arts education doesn't put a premium on precise visual information. Art history training relies on slides, reproductions and PowerPoint projections, where much of the detail is not visible—this in contrast to the sciences, where visual precision in the presentation of data can be critical. With a painter like Lars Strandh, a Swede living in Norway, you run into the repercussions of this phenomenon. In reproduction, his paintings look like monochrome rectangles straight out of Ellsworth Kelly. But nothing could be further from the experience of seeing them in person at Zeitgeist, where you find subtle textures and luminous surfaces that no print can reproduce.
Zeitgeist currently is showing a series of paintings by Strandh, all of which follow a similar model. Each rectangular work consists of a single color tonality built up from horizontal lines of related tints painstakingly painted by hand. The technique produces complex visual effects and leads into a surprising interplay of disparate sensations.
The first impression of Strandh's paintings comes from their rich color. Each panel focuses on a single range of hues: aqua blue, red, orange and white to name a few. Every painting contains roughly five or more different tones. He chooses them carefully so no single line stands out. Each of these paintings may contain 15 layers of paint, and Strandh works to make sure he gets exactly the right balance of tones. Creating a single color out of several related shades produces a sensation of lushness that you would not necessarily get from a truly monochromatic painting.
Several color effects occur in the paintings. First of all, the various colors converge toward a single tone as they blend in the eye. This is most obvious in a painting that appears to be black, but is composed of purple, green, olive and midnight-blue lines. It's like Eugène Delacroix's shadows, always composed with a mix of colors, never black. The blending of colors is more pronounced in the bigger paintings—the larger amount of color covering the larger surface enhances the effect. So does the scale, since you tend to stand farther away from a big piece in a gallery, which makes it more likely that your eye will take in the object as a unitary whole rather than focus on its details.
Strandh also gets interesting results from the adjacency of various colors. Several pieces appear to get darker in their corners. These are the kinds of visual phenomena that color theorists like Josef Albers explored. The Frist Center's exhibit of prints by Chuck Close, who studied with Albers, showed someone working with those ideas in a scientific way, in silkscreens that overlaid a hundred colors or more. Strandh's method seems more causal and experimental, in spite of the clearly meticulous effort involved.
The variety of paint tones also gives these works a sense of texture. While your eye may blend the colors, you can also see the lines as striations that might be on the verge of unraveling. Where the impression of big monochromatic fields conveys sensations of solidity and impenetrability, when you focus on the lines the image seems less stable and more permeable. Also, the different paints used in each work reflect light differently, so depending on the viewer's position in the gallery, one set of lines or another will shine a bit and stand out from the background. This is another case where the apparent certainties and simplicity of these paintings give way to lots of nuance. Works that appear unquestionably flat take on subtle three-dimensionality.
The lines in these paintings have been painted freehand, without benefit of masking tape or guidelines. Though no doubt an impressive piece of draftsmanship, on closer look you see that the lines aren't really straight. In fact, few of the lines go all the way across the painting. What you see is more like a dense pile of dashes, almost as if Strandh compressed the bars from the chromatography used to test DNA.
The underlying dynamic of Strandh's paintings is their ability to represent both unity and disintegration. With his carefully modulated range of tonality, he makes sure that no single element or gesture has a jarring effect or brings attention to itself. But with a slight shift in the viewer's focus, each painting appears to contain a large number of discrete signals that don't quite emerge as a discernible pattern. They point to a fluid physical state—far from what you would expect at first glance. If you only see Strandh's paintings in reproduction, you'll never pick up on the degree of mutability and nuance you can find in this work when viewed in person.






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Aftenposten, 2008. Solo exhibition at Galleri Semmingsen, Oslo
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Nashville Scene, 2008. Exhibition: Medium Well, Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TE, USA
Medium Well 
In the first of a series of shows exploring different art media, Zeitgeist tackles painting
by DAVID MADDOX April 03, 2008
Zeitgeist has the ambition of a museum lurking inside a commercial gallery, as will be evident for the next several months. The gallery is assembling a series of group shows surveying work in different media, laying claim to a curatorial voice that weighs in on what each medium is and means. First up: painting, the heart of Western art, apparently not relegated to history’s dustbin.Zeitgeist built this show from the work of 15 artists, predominantly gallery regulars and others with Tennessee ties. With a handful of pieces, the show finds the boundaries between painting and other media. The approach self-consciously questions its own organizing principle—sure, this show is about painting, but who knows what that is? But in the end, Zeitgeist finds plenty of vitality within painting’s traditional confines.
Kelly Popoff-Punches takes the first step away from painting by layering the paint into a thick, cakey surface with a grainy, mineral texture. She goes further and paints with actual dirt, applied in patches big enough to look like a bit of exposed earth. This “painting” is really a mixed-media work, with other collage elements that add lots of textural variety, slick as well as grainy, thin and thick in spots.
Several works veer toward sculpture. Gallery director Lain York has for years painted on wooden boxes that protrude a little from the wall. He scored and gouged those surfaces in ways that were more carving than painting. More recently he has taken his paintings off the wall, working with smaller wooden boxes that he lines up and stacks on the ground. In this show, he has a three-part work, each piece about the size and shape of a tombstone, bathed in soothing tones of creamy greens and marked with wispy drawings and furtive marks of faces.
John Tallman slathers wooden shapes with thick layers of acrylic and arrays them on the wall and on the floor. Tallman’s creation is the array of these objects within three-dimensional space, another clear nod to sculpture.
The show also explores the painting’s intersection with photography. Rocky Horton paints with photo chemicals on photo paper, creating abstractions that could be ink drawings but make new use of photography’s chemical processes. Gene Wilken’s contribution, “Homage to Jean-Baptiste Corot After Gerhard Richter,” is a photograph of a surreally green country lane with the center of the image blurred. The bucolic landscape seems worthy of a 19th century painter like Corot, and the blurriness mimics contemporary artist Richter’s paintings of photographs. Wilken has done a photograph imitating a painter imitating photographs.
In the end, much of the work that stands out in this show reinforces what painting has always done—provide pleasure from form and colors. Lars Strandh’s abstract paintings each present a single rectangle of color framed by a white background. The predominant colors are distinct—gray, black, red—but narrow horizontal lines of color are overlaid on the basic color ground. While the rectangles are clean and precise, the lines within the rectangles are more loosely painted, with rich colors that make these abstract forms more sensuous than austere.
A survey of painting would be incomplete without the human figure, and it’s represented here in Terry Rowlett’s new Old Master portraits and Farrar Hood’s sleeping woman surrounded by the patterns of interior design. Beyond the figure, Western art has the nude body at its core—a subject that Sara La explores, if unconventionally. Her “Bird of Paradise 1” shows a man, nude except for a harlequin hat, hanging upside-down. One leg is crooked backward, and he holds that ankle with one hand. His other hand holds his penis in such a way as to divide a copious stream of pee into two streams that arc out in opposite directions. (The painting has earned the nickname “The Golden Arches.”) It’s a funny image. First of all, it’s like a little boy playing. The figure can also be seen as dancing or making an acrobatic move, in keeping with a jester, but the figure also could be suffering torture—the foot and ankle of one leg are not visible, and for all we know they are locked in irons.
The pose also resembles the crucified figure in the Hanged Man card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck. The meanings assigned to the Hanged Man include treachery or sacrifice, along with more tangential qualities like wisdom and discernment. Tarot cards represent archetypes, vivid images that are open to many interpretations, in much the same way that paintings have the power to create pictures that become fodder for speculation and imagination. Sara La navigates between familiar and unexpected images to introduce a new figure for imaginative use.
This show plays around the boundaries of painting, but also digs into the medium’s sweet spots—the creation of multifaceted images, the play of cultural, historical and social references, and the sensuous characteristics of paint and pigment.
At 6 p.m. on Tuesday, April 8, Zeitgeist is hosting a panel discussion about painting that will feature Rocky Horton and two painters not in the show, Terry Thacker and Kelly Williams.






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University City Review, 2008. Exhibition: «To be looked at...», Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PÅ, USA
By R.B. Strauss | ArtStalker | 30.JUL.08
Nearly half the artists on view are newbies in "To Be Looked At"  This is the annual summer group show at Larry Becker Contemporary Art, 43 North Second Street.
Beyond their first time status, these artists offer up thematic consistency as far as palette is concerned, in that the work is grounded in cool shades of blue to offset summer.  The hours during the run of this show are by appointment only.
Bunched and tiny swirled marks accrue in power until at length yield a rich power in "Wanderings," an acrylic piece by Anna Bogatin. This one is labor intensive to the max and offers up a sense of movement within the work (of course), an uncanny feat that suggests a stream running its path to where it at last meets the river.
The sky is present this time in "Blue’s Silence (inner night)," an oil by Shingo Francis. This features a great solid wall of dusk with a narrow strip running across the bottom that brings to mind the fading afternoon light soon given way to night.  The mood here has a single reservation. This painting, more than most in this show, should be larger.  Much larger.
Martha Groome lets loose with "Some Blues," yet another acrylic on canvas. This is a triptych of sorts that features a central deep dark section flanked on the left by a light hue and on the right by a medium shade of blue. There is an almost imperceptible flaw that has been built into the work on purpose so as to drop this piece into our own mundane reality.
"Untitled," another acrylic work—this one by Lars Strandh—offers up its shades of blue in a series of thin, nearly overlapping horizontal bands that are at once atmospheric and aquatic. The hypnotic immediacy here gains further depth on subsequent viewing as one is drawn in tight to this painting’s ever-expansive heart.
"To Be Looked At" is something you all need to do, so make your call now.







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The Philadelphia Inquire, 2008. Exhibition: «To be looked at...», Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PÅ, USA
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Dagbladet, 2006. Solo exhibition at Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo
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Asbury Park Press. 2005. Exhibition: «Paint it Black». the Shore Institute of the Contemporary Arts, Long Branch, New Jersey, USA
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