Steinar Jakobsen "Skeleton Solar"
Opening Reception : Friday 17 January 7:00 PM
Galleri K, Oslo is pleased to have this opportunity to present Steinar Jakobsen's third solo exhibition at the gallery. Jakobsen has been among the most notable young painters in Norway since the mid nineteen-nineties. The artist has, in the past year taken part in a range of prominent exhibitions in Norway as well as internationally. His work is represented in several major institutions and collections, among others : The Museet for Samtidskunst (The Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo) and the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst. Jakobsen is currently working toward his first solo exhibition in New York at the Margaret Thatcher Projects gallery, opening in March 2003.
"Skeleton Solar" does not have a clear definition, but can be interpreted to mean "an undressing of light" or "the nakedness of light". Steinar Jakobsen's new works, a series of different subjects engraved into yellow Plexiglas, have been gathered under this somewhat enigmatic title. The artist's subtle technique has been inspired by "tagging" on the windows of the New York subway, probably one of the most direct and basic forms of present-day populist art. The subjects make up a fragmentary and seemingly destructive narrative: video images materializing as electronic glitch and faulty exposures, clippings of disaster scenes from the Internet, collapsed buildings and twisted architecture.
In this sense, "light" can be read metaphorically as "what is seen by the eye." This has been portrayed also as second-hand experience in Jakobsen's earlier works, like the nightly glimpse through the digital video camera of the 2000 "Nightvisions" series, or the stream of mass media images of everyday life that have been a fixed attribute of Jakobsen's works from the mid nineties. In the Skeleton Solar series, the blurring effect of a careful engraving of the subject has been intensified and highlighted in the reflective and glaring qualities of the Plexiglas (a medium which Yoko Ono once referred to as a "metaphor for light").
