ARIUS MARTINUSSEN 1 MARIUS MARTINUSSEN Reflection and Refraction September 11 – October 9, 2021 3 FORWARD Amenor Gallery in Stavanger, Norway is pleased to announce the opening of ‘Reflection and Refraction’, the solo exhibition by the Norwegian artist, Marius Martinussen. In Marius Martinussen’s art, the formal abstraction is in focus. Through a long series of paintings, he has explored the possibilities of abstraction over the past 15 years, both for the painting itself, and also for the viewer. His painting are banquet of colours and lines which reflect and refract the light of serenity through layers of expressive emotion. It is as if spectator become a jeweller looking at the gem of life for evaluation of its purity and geometrical substance. This exciting abstract colourist is unafraid of using strong and unexpected colour combination to create a dynamic expression and drama. For the audience the concept of golden ratio in the painting is imperative but Martinussen approach to this notion is idiosyncratic, instead of having a focal point evocative he forms the association of edges, lines, and colour shade layers so the whole painting speak to the viewers and give them an imprint of the feeling. Martinussen’s confront the abstraction with fresh, distinctive apparent urgency and he embraces the medium without fear of being outdated and irrelevant. The artist takes on a philosophy to his practice, the multi-layered method of taping and colouring to the whole new level in this new collection. The paintings featured in `Reflection and Refraction` take a spectator back to the idea of language as the principal element of artistic innovation. Vincent Gorbani Amenor, Stavenger 4 5 ARTIST STATEMENT Marius Martinussen was born in Kristiansand 19. April 1978. He grew up in Arendal and moved to Oslo when he started Einar Granum Artschool. He was accepted at Trondheim art academy where he would paint the next 5 years which a small exception of a small stay in Kuvataide academia in Helsinki. After his studies he moved to Berlin and worked there for 2 years. Now he lives and works in Oslo. He has a large number of solo and group exhibitions behind him both in Norway and abroad. Previously purchased by Norges Bank, SKMU, Trondheim Artmuseum, KLP, REV ocean and so on.. Martinussen has also performed several decorating assignments for div. institutions as Sam Eyde VGS, UIA, SIA, MS Roald Amundsen, TUI Cruise ship,St. Olavs Hospital and NSB school. In Marius Martinussen’s art, the formal abstraction is in focus. Through a long series of paintings, he has over the past 15 years explored the possibilities of abstraction, both for the painting itself, but also up to the viewer. From previously combining several pictorial expressions, Martinussen has in recent years moved towards a cleaner design language and a desire to refine and refine this. In these works, we generally find a relatively strict geometry where all points and lines relate to the golden ratio. In this new series, the perspective is both completely flat and with an incredible depth. With references to both Cubism and Abstract Expressionism, the paintings are without a clear focal point, and rather have several possible entrance portals for the viewer. Martinussen works out of a desire for a digital-like precision, but avoids the lifelessness of the digital expression and unsatisfactory color. The works are highly controlled exercises. The soft and hard transitions go elegantly across the canvas one after the other, and the color choices are both elegant and unexpected while the precision is unparalleled. Martinussen is a painter with many facets. In just a few years, he has distinguished himself as one of the most productive and prominent painters who grew up in the 80s and 90s. He gives our contemporaries an artistic expression through the use of the media and the advertising language in the visual arts. He is a skilled colorist and does not hold back on the colors. His paintings are colorful and extravagant with a wide range of references to the popular visual culture. The smooth surface and finish are extremely important to Martinussen, he does not like traces of brushstrokes and would rather have an expression that resembles a print. But he does not print the pictures, and the techniques he uses, he will not reveal. Reference is made to pop art, expressionism and modernist abstraction when talking about his paintings. Marius Martinussen 6 7 Previous pages SoriaMoria, 2019 (detail) ART CRITIC TEXT 8 9 Erlend G. Høyersten When Martinussen selects these two (in Director Sørlandets Art Museum Norway) well-known faces, he uses the same device Andy Warhol used in the 1960s, of re-producing popular culture’s icons, in the form of things and people. Yet Martinussen’s choice of Nilsen as icon is also conspicuously Marius Martinussen (b. 1978) is a painter with different. Kurt Nilsen can indeed be described many facets. He approaches the problematics as charming, yet he is far from photogenic. and challenges of painting through formal The first thing you notice is the gap between experiments, but also through references to art the singer’s front teeth. This wily twist on the history, different stylistic expressions, and art idea of ‘an ideal’ also arises when the crown- theory. Thus the formal and physical spectra princess portrait becomes the décor in a bar of his work is relatively large. Just as with many (which, it is worth noting, is placed in an of his fellow contemporary artists, Martinussen art gallery). By emphasizing that the royal is often on the move, and always has new family is first and foremost a part of popular projects underway in a variety of contexts. He culture, and no longer a pure aristocracy, he works just as happily with small canvases, such carefully disrupts, consciously or unconsciously, as in the project Eye Candies, as with large our ingrown conceptions about the difference surfaces, for example Feed Me to the Forest or between high and low culture. In one sense, Norwegian Trace. Martinussen presents them both as idols— as unachievable ideals. Simultaneously he Martinussen has painted large portraits dismantles their status by highlighting their directly on walls. He has painted the winner of normality and the chance nature of destiny. Norwegian Idol and World Idol competitions, Kurt Nilsen, and Norway’s Crown Princess Mette Marit. The faces are painted in a naturalistic style based upon photographs. The representation of and enthusiasm for The style and the size of the portraits can popular culture, trivial culture, music culture, be reminiscent of wall paintings used as advertising, interior design, etc., can also be propaganda during different dictatorships and traced in Martinussen’s other paintings. These political regimes. can be described as precise and energetic. The artist uses a masking technique and When considering these two projects in acrylic paint, which creates a clean and precise tandem, we notice that the princess and the transition between the fields of colour; the even Idol-competition winner share a similar destiny. monochrome quality enhances the graphic Each comes from a middle-class background; expression afforded by the precise lines. Some one was a plumber, the other a typical single of Martinussen’s works have an almost linear mother with a rich mix of life-experiences. Both and calligraphic style of representation. At first became involved in a situation that changed glance, they draw associations to art Nouveau their lives drastically and completely. Their and certain graphic elements from 1960s lives are like fairy tales from reality. Their new and ‘70s interior design. This is particularly social roles have become objects for ardor, apparent in a work such as Hunted. admiration and criticism. Golden Ratio, 2018 (detail) 10 11 Martinussen is an adept and exciting colourist, a postmodern perspective. Martinussen’s unafraid of using strong colours or unexpected paintings deal with the established contrasts: colour combinations. These cords of colour of abstraction versus figuration, figure versus create a dynamic expression and seem related pictorial surface, content versus form, colour to big-city neon signage, graffiti, psychedelic versus line, and political versus personal issues. posters from the 1960s and diverse cartoon- series experiments from the ‘70s. In an essay from 2002, Barry Schwabsky has claimed that the contemporary In works such as Solo, Star and Crowd, painting carries, as its distinct inheritance these same formal elements are also readily from Modernism and Conceptualism, the noticeable. The pictures are abstract and can presupposition that a painting is not just a seem chaotic. By the artist’s own account, painting, but also a representation of ideas they are inspired by visual elements from rock tied to painting as a phenomenon. This is one concerts. They can look like small explosions, of the reasons why today there are so few chance flashes from searchlights or refractions antagonisms between representational and in photo-lenses. On closer inspection, we see non-figurative painting. In both cases, the that this energy is ordered into an aesthetic painting’s raison d’être is not to reproduce a expression that reveals a fair amount of motif; rather, the motif is chosen in order to control. The dualistic feature—the tension visualize the ideas and practice of painting, in between chaos and control—creates an other words: the idea of painting as such. interesting feeling of energy. The continuously undulating colour and structure gives the The contemporary painting is created in pictures a physical anchoring, which stands in a cultural context where it is no longer contrast to the smooth, perfect, and almost possible to claim that art is one thing. Art no cold surface-treatment the artist often prefers.