Good to See You: Martin Aagaard Hansen, Katrine Bobek, Morten Knudsen, Charlie Roberts, Trude Viken

Golsa is proud to present Good to See You — a group exhibition introducing new works by Martin Aagaard Hansen, Katrine Bobek, Morten Knudsen, Charlie Roberts, and Trude Viken. This is the inaugural show in our new exhibition space in Henrik Ibsens Gate 60 in Solli Plass, Oslo. 

Sitting down to plan a new exhibition is always a pivotal moment. New beginnings like this are an opportunity to meet new people, retrace existing relationships, flex our curious muscles and share new energy.

It’s been a year since we’ve had the opportunity to welcome you, but we haven’t been resting on our laurels. While you could not visit us physically, we’ve been looking forward to showing you exciting art and artists. We’ve also been busy getting the new gallery space ready for the new season – it’s exciting to open our doors to you once again.

This show is a celebration of the artists whose expressions have captured our attention.

Charlie Roberts paints a tapestry of ideas, a zig-zag of references – elongated figures coming together in anticipation. They welcome us with their idiosyncratic effervescence. Katrine Bobek’s figure in gold basks in a blaze of sunshine, pulsating with energy, floating on a bed of ruby-red flowers. Trude Viken’s languid figures populate the canvas in thinly-veiled acknowledgment. Heavy and ponderous, they seem privy to latent secrets. Nighttime melancholy takes over in Martin Aagaard Hansen’s expressive paintings, basking in the aura of nature transformed. The bat is a surefire dweller in Morten Knudsen’s nocturnal iconography. The scenery, obscure and cocoon-like at the same time, echoes around the bat in an aura of pulsating movement, completing this playful multiverse and fashioning a new cosmogony.

Good to see you. 

Opening reception will be held on Thursday, October 27th, from 18.00 to 20.00.

The exhibition will be open from Friday, October 28th, through Saturday, November 19th.

For further questions, please contact us at:⁠ 

info@golsa.no⁠

+47 997 87 475

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Martin Aagaard Hansen’s paintings take as their inspiration existing figures and narratives. Using books and other found materials, characters are transported into another world, as Aagaard Hansen reimagines and builds upon their stories. These characters come to life through a laborious yet seamless technique, as paint almost seems to bubble up to the surface, creating a unique texture and guiding us as we explore.

Martin Aagaard Hansen (b. 1988) holds a MBA from The Royal Danish academy of fine arts. His recent exhibitions include: The Lurid Season at M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, 2022 (USA), Triple Burner at Union Pacific, London, 2021 (UK), The Tired Mask of Spring at Salon 75, Copenhagen, 2020 (DK), Velvet Ropes, Galleri Golsa, Oslo, 2019 (NO), Ein Plein Air, XYZ Kunstscenen, Copenhagen, 2018 (DK), Widnes, Kunsthal Ronnerbaeksholm, Copenhagen, 2017 (DK). Aagaard Hansen lives and works in Copenhagen. 

Katrine Bobek gradually expands forms and bodies out of an idea of the animated as an internal endeavor. Layers of paint move before the eyes as slowly as they are painted, searching the point where material and color at hand mix and solidify, not taking for granted the inherent component, physicality and bodily agency. Impressions of the figure stop and wrench in a moment before the realization of the entities interacted with, and leave a different setting and ambience.

Katrine Bobek (b. 1990) holds a degree from Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Recent exhibitions include: Tuning violet tangles at Pina, 2021, Wien (AT), Star, at Fonda, 2021, Leipzig (DE), 10 at PM/AM Gallery, 2021, London (UK), Between Image and event at Magasinlotus, 2021, Copenhagen (DK) and Mayfly Keeper at Arcway Nightlands Connector Jennifee-see Alternate, 2020, Copenhagen (DK), Die neue linje at Bar du Bois, 2018, Wien (AT), Allow me to introduce myself, Pro Temp at Galleri Susanne Ottesen, 2017, København (DK), 2017. Bobek is based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Morten Knudsen spends his time making paintings both lyrical and abstract, graphic and figurative, large and small. Over the course of the previous decade, he has been working carefully to orchestrate an eclectic body of work that reveals its consistency in its intimate sensibilities - to both acknowledge his deep appreciation of painting as an act in itself, but also to explore and reveal its potential to create experiences outside the verbal language.

Morten Knudsen (b. 1985) holds a degree from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen, and Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, in the class of Jutta Köether. Recent exhibitions include: “Songs for the Promise Keeper” at Simo Bacar, Lisbon, 2022 (PT), Danish Art Now at The National Gallery of Denmark, 2020, Copenhagen (DK), “Himmelskibet” at Christian Andersen Gallery Copenhagen, 2020, Copenhagen (DK) and “Architecture Now” at La Cucina Copenhagen, 2020, Copenhagen (DK). In 2018 he received the Niels Wessel Bagges honorary scholarship, and The 15th June Foundation’s Honorary Award. Knudsen lives and works in Copenhagen.

Charlie Roberts’ works seem to warp the image of the modern world, as if through a distorted looking glass. Portraying young lovers with elongated limbs, contemporary novels, and Gucci suits, Roberts nevertheless expresses uneasiness with modernity. His works consist of a wide range of art-historical and pop-cultural references – stretched and twisted, placed on display in an array of materials, from paint to clay to carved wood. The subject matter, in its everyday banality, seems to be at odds with the delicacy of the various media Roberts wields.

Charlie Roberts (b.1983) is educated at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, Canada and Kansas University, USA. Recent exhibitions include: Dream Chasers at Woaw Gallery, 2022, Hong Kong, Mercurial Matters at Richard Heller Gallery, 2022, Santa Monica (USA), Cosmic Hedge at Golsa, 2019, Oslo (NO), No Ceilings at Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, 2018 (SE), Windows at David Risley Gallery, 2017, Copenhagen (DK), Juicy Fruit at Kravets/Wehby Gallery, 2015, New York City (USA). Roberts is based in Oslo.

Trude Viken is a colorist without restrictions. In her works, the smell and texture of the chunky layers of oil paint linger as both a physical and emotional expression. Her portraits of expressive faces develop into fantasies about our interior lives and most palpable yet often suppressed feelings, providing associations to the space where the grotesque meets the erotic and eventually the humorous. 

The intensity of Viken’s expression is characterized by heavy impasto. Far from shying away from them, Viken revels in portraying the excesses of the subconscious and the rawness of human experience, which seem to bubble up and erupt onto the canvas, refusing to be suppressed by the canons of contemporary life, in search for release.

Trude Viken (b. 1969) studied with the painter Markus Brendmoe, Oslo, Norway. Recent exhibitions include Midnight Activities at Belenius Gallery, 2022, Stockholm (SE), Midnight Theater, Fortnight Institute, 2021, New York (USA), Night Eyes, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, 2021, Norway (NO) and Unmasked at M+B, 2019, Los Angeles (USA). Trude Viken lives and works in Oslo.