The Astrup Fearnley Museum will reopen in a new space designed by Renzo Piano in Oslo on Sept. 29th. The new site is in a newly-redeveloped waterfront area that will allow the museum to show more of its permanent collection, says the museum’s director, Gunnar Kvaran. The first show, “To Be With Art Is All We Ask”, will include works owned by the museum with pieces by Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Cindy Sherman, among others.  (more…)

But, What Ends When The Symbols Shatter (2009); Caligula (2010). All images courtesy Bonniers Konsthall unless otherwise noted.

Gardar Eide Einarsson is one of the fastest rising Scandinavian contemporary artists, and his exhibition Power Has a Fragrance currently on view at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm is a testament to his momentum. Addressing themes of violence, authority, power, paranoia, and alienation, Einarsson draws heavily on graffiti and street culture, transforming appropriated imagery into sophisticated installations that land like spaceships in a minimalist’s paradise.

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Dan Colen, Me, Jesus and the Children (2001-2003)

The aftereffects of Dan Colen’s highly publicized, and certainly polarizing breakout show at Gagosian Gallery last fall still resonate.  Though some saw Colen’s show as Icarian, it certainly put the artist on the map for a broader audience.  Astrap Fearnley gallery in Oslo now presents a show that, while displaying works that are certainly less grand and ambitious than the inverted life sized skateboard ramps and toppled motorcycles of the Gagosian show, still has a nicely broad scope of the artist’s works over time.  Chewing gum, oil paint imitating bird droppings, graffiti tags, stills from Disney movies: these are what Dan Colen uses to create his art. Part of the “Bowery School” from downtown New York, Colen creates art from everyday objects and experiences. His painstaking reproductions of recognizable scenes undermine perception, as in The Cloud and the Ghost (The Birds and the Bees), where an impossible ghost rises out of a glass on the bedside table towards a hand holding out pills from a cloud. At the same time, his purposeful randomness takes away the control most expect in art. Astrup Fearnley brings together a collection of a wide range of Colen’s work in his exhibition, Peanuts.

Dan Colen, Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover (Another Country) (2010)

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