Brynjulf Bulls plass 3
0250 Oslo
Norway
The National Museum of Norway presents the first solo exhibitions in the Light Hall, the museum’s large space for temporary exhibitions. Laure Prouvost has been commissioned to make a site-specific installation for the space. The exhibition Above Front Tears Oui Float is an immersive landscape and the artist’s biggest project to date. The other solo presentation in the Light Hall, Grayson Perry. Fitting In and Standing Out, shows the full range of Grayson Perry’s works from the early 1980’s up until the present day.
Laure Prouvost: Above Front Tears Oui Float
November 5, 2022–February 12, 2023
For the first site-specific installation for the Light Hall, Laure Prouvost has created a universe of contrast. One moment Prouvost confronts us with global warming´s effects and the migration of humans and birds, and the next moment she invites us to float unfettered above the clouds and cut through frontiers.
Above Front Tears Oui Float is an immersive installation containing film, sound, performance, sculptures, textile and text, blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality. Occupying two of the three immense halls, the artist´s installation tickles our senses and emotions and plays with our experience of gravity. Pulsating lights, hybrid glass birds and fountains are part of this landscape.
The exhibition has an underlying seriousness, but its considerations for nature, environmental challenges, migration and the pandemic are conveyed with warmth and absurd humour. The hybrid, both in text and work, is important in Laure Prouvost’s oeuvre. In a monumental video installation, Grandma, one of the main protagonists in Prouvost’s artistic universe, has fulfilled her dream of soaring in the air, looking at the world from a bird’s eye view. Grandma’s dreams and visions form the basis for the exhibition.
Laure Prouvost is the first artist to receive the Fredriksen Commission for Norway’s new National Museum. The Fredriksen Commission is an ambitious commissioning program. The series of five biennial commissions over 10 years will enable large-scale works by leading international artists to be seen in Norway. Each artist will be invited to create a work or an installation for the Light Hall, exploring the possibilities of this unique space.
Laure Prouvost received the MaxMara Art Prize for Women in 2011 and received the prestigious Turner Prize in 2013. She represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2019.
Grayson Perry: Fitting In and Standing Out
November 11, 2022–March 26, 2023
According to Grayson Perry, “Pottery is my gimmick.” But just as the artist himself, the exhibition Grayson Perry: Fitting In and Standing Out is wide-ranging and includes ceramics, wood and metal sculptures, prints, monumental tapestries, and embroidery. A recurring theme is the provocatively humorous pictorial stories that are a trademark for Perry, who started experimenting with ceramics in the 1980s.
In the UK, Grayson Perry is equal parts lauded artist and national treasure. In addition to acclaimed exhibitions, he has written books, made documentaries and award-winning television series, and is regarded as one of the UK’s most influential cultural personalities. Grayson Perry: Fitting In and Standing Out provides a glimpse into Grayson Perry’s diverse artistic output from the 1980s until the present.
Perry’s personal and compassionate view of society will come to the fore in the exhibition. His works revolve around topics such as identity, class, gender roles, and the consumer society. His art uncovers and challenges social norms, values, and taboos, structures that affect how we perceive ourselves and how we act—and how others see us.
Grayson Perry won the Turner Prize in 2003 for his innovative pictorial stories and his sharp, satirical look at English culture and society. He has been awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire and is a member of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Other temporary exhibitions at the National Museum this autumn:
Coming Into Community
September 23, 2022–January 29, 2023
The exhibition Coming Into Community is about inclusion and exclusion. How have architecture and urban planning been influenced by ideas about community? Why do we feel safe in particular spaces? Can architecture help nurture interpersonal relations? How is community important in LGBTQ+ circles?
Swedish art and architecture collective MYCKET has created an interactive installation, a queer and playful venue with historical elements. The other part of the exhibition shows a display of examples from the past 70 years of how ideas about community have influenced architecture and urban planning. What does urban planning look like from queer, feminist and other marginalized perspectives?
Coming Into Community is part of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2022.
Piranesi and the Modern
September 9, 2022–January 8, 2023
The exhibition presents Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s most famous works and explore his significance for art, architecture, film and photography in our own times. Works by Piranesi from more than 250 years ago are displayed alongside works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay and Julie Mehretu, the architects Le Corbusier and Rem Koolhaas, and groundbreaking photographers and filmmakers such as Alvin Langdon Coburn and Sergei Eisenstein.
The National Museum has been very fortunate to be allowed to borrow the copper printing plates for Piranesi’s ‘Campo Marzio’ (1762) for this exhibition. The plates have never before been exhibited outside Rome. In addition, the exhibition includes architectural models and collages by Rem Koolhaas that have never previously been exhibited.
About the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design
The National Museum is home to Norway’s largest collection of art, architecture and design. The collection contains 400,000 objects ranging from the antiquity to the present day and includes paintings, sculpture, drawings, textiles, furniture and architectural models. A new museum building was inaugurated in June 2022. The museum presents art, architecture and design on three floors filling close to 90 rooms and halls.