Heiberg Cummings and Turid Meeker Contemporary Art are pleased to announce an exhibition of drawings by Kjell Erik Killi Olsen, one of Norway’s best-known artists. Turid Meeker is the curator of the exhibition.
2/14/2005 :: With a surreal merging of figure and landscape, Kjell Erik Killi Olsen renders images of isolation, transformation, discontent and disconnection with a wild and mordant humor. In Olsen’s world, beauty, truth and horror all meet by chance on the stairs and sometimes end up in bed together.
Olsen's distinctively personal pictorial language reflects both early years in Warsaw, and the decadent exuberance of New York’s East Village in the 1980s, when Olsen showed at influential galleries like New Math and Hal Bromm. In fact, Olsen is currently featured in an '80s East Village retrospective. The influence of living on the wilder shores of New York still resonates. Olsen’s characters frequently surrender to, or are simply consumed by their circumstances.
A boat sinks into the vortex of a woman’s stomach, a tree grows from a man’s head, there are woodland creatures from a forest you have seen only in your nightmares. This private mythology seems derived as much from Eastern Europe as from the artist’s native Norway. These delicate, yet painful drawings evoke echoes of Kafka and the classic Russian novel of myth and transformation, Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita,” in which the Devil disguised as a black cat wreaks havoc on the hapless citizens of Moscow. Both artists share a similar sense of wonderment at the essential incurable madness of the world.
Opening reception February 17 at 6-8 pm.
When: Thursday, February 17 through Saturday, March 12.
Where: Heiberg Cummings at 9 West 19th Street, NYC
Info: (212) 337-2030