TRUDE VIKEN
With their unapologetic maximalism—layered brushwork, saturated color, and carnivalesque staging—they (the paintings) evoked a kind of malevolent whimsy, something like the work of Francis Bacon crossed with that of Florine Stettheimer…in “Midnight Theater,” (Viken) gave us merely a small taste of the strange delights she has to offer.
Hannah Stamler, Art Forum 2021
B. 1969, Lødingen,
Norway
Lives and works in
Oslo, Norway
Trude Viken is a ‘colorist’ without restrictions. Her paintings are saturated with swirls of fleshtones, ashy greys and witchy greens coupled with bright red, orange, yellow, and luminous pinks. A face becomes a hairy green mass with bubble gum pink base, white strokes like the edges of clouds or wings. Her portraits from everyday life develop into fantasies expressing our interior lives and our most palpable feelings. With Viken’s hand, layers of oil paint become whirling eyes, nose, mouth, ecstatic grimaces or smirks, finished when she decides so. Rows of twisted, kneaded faces hung together like a ghoulish family album of passing moods and impulse. The final marks different from the original swaths. Shapes are dissolved as the layers of paint can be repainted many times; almost anything is allowed.
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2021: Midnight Theater,
Fortnight Institute, New York, NY
2021: Night Eyes, Vestfossen
Kunstlaboratorium, Norway
2019: Unmasked, M + B, Los Angeles, USA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022: Person(a), Venus Over Manhattan, New York, NY
2022: Åpningsutstillingen,
National Museum Norway
2022: Lost in a Spectacle curated by Saša Bogojev, Woah
Gallery, Hong Kong
2020: Ryszard
Warsinski + Trude Viken, Bærum Kunsthall, Oslo