Øyvind Sørfjordmo (1987) graduated from his masters at Kunstakademiet in Oslo in 2018 and showed for the first time at BGE Contemporary in 2020 with the exhibition “Skreddertimen”. He currently lives and works in Oslo.
Sørfjordmo's drawings, paintings and sculptures seek to communicate with one another across their different media, with the joint goal of exploring the limitations within the materials used. His artistic process starts with research in the form of sketches he develops of shapes and visual expressions he pursues to study. The artist then proceeds to convey his research on to a canvas, or in the form of a sculpture, or more often than not, a combination of media that are to be seen in connection with one another.
The exhibition “Vacation Time” continued his steady focus on this dialogue between different media, exploring and investigating possibilities and limits within the nonfigurative and abstract expression. Through his paintings, Sørfjordmo investigates their endless possibilities, as well as their boundaries by searching for ways to use the material at hand. This process of pursuing techniques that he does not yet master, evolves his works and artistry, though following a recognizable thread throughout.
After his stay in Paris at the residency Cité internationale des arts, particularly one part of the city’s art history inspired him, the art group Les Nabis. Consisting of artist such as Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, the group worked in the end of the 19-century and played a great role in the transition from impressionism to abstract art. Sørfjordmo’s main inspiration is the rejection of easel painting as a window onto a fictional world. In the words of Maurice Denis, the results remind us that painting “is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.”
In contradiction to the bright pastels of Les Nabis, Sørfjordmo has used a much more darkened palette. Sørfjordmo says “I wanted to create an expression in my paintings that is similar to the sensatory experience of looking out in to the darkness at night. Like the dusk develops over time, I want to invite the viewer to see new things when studying the surface of my canvases, to finish the paintings for me.”
Accident and chance are key components in Sørfjordmo’s creative process, both when painting and his production of sculptures. His sculptures are often shaped out of found material from waste stations or containers, and its shapes serve as inspiration for his further work on canvas.
Sørfjordmo is a part of the permanent collection of artworks at Trondheim Kunstmuseum, and has exhibited at Høstutstillingen at Kunstnernes Hus in 2018. He was awarded the Håkon Bleken Scholarship in 2018. He is now recited at Cité internationale des arts, in Paris.