BJØRN VENØ
Chapter II & III

13 February - 15 March 2009

VIEW WORK



The Kernel of Apathy, Destruction of a Soul, 2008
from the “Behold” series
Dibond mounted Giclée print
90 x 300 cm

NETTIE HORN is pleased to present the first UK solo exhibition by Bjørn Venø; featuring two of his latest photographic series alongside a diaristic video documenting the production process of his previous series of works “Sirkel”.

Following on from “Sirkel”, Venø presents two additional chapters of his on-going series of works entitled “Paradigm” and “Behold”. Venø continues his exploration and research into contemporary issues of male identity and the struggles surrounding what it means to be a man in today’s society. The photographs - whose composition and planning is as exquisite as it is rigorous - seem to sit half way between the still frame of an unidentified documentary film and the complex narratives of painting.

Personally playing the main character in each photograph, Venø’s narrative scenes are based on personal facts and specific memories from his past. The works are tinted with a fictional impression due to the combination of high-end production and incongruous elements, and yet a sincere and unsettling sense of loss, tension and despair transpires. Often presenting the scenes of his “fictional autobiographies” in places and settings which are personal to him – from his ancestors’ Norwegian farmland to his various childhood homes – Venø uses “automated performance” as a way to access his subconscious.
In “Paradigm”, Venø steps into the space between childhood fantasy and adult suffering, revisiting the houses in which he once lived and now negotiating his response with the physical language of the body. Somewhere between a refuge and an adventure, this return into the past is inevitably laced with melancholia and yet we discover him, with a feeling of unease and empathy, as an adult desperately trying to find meaning to his own expectations of what it is to be a man.
Introducing an additional character in the “Behold” series, Venø casts family members (and often female members who are more likely to understand his predicament) in order to portray his scenes of despair, and simultaneously initiates a sincere dialogue throughout these complex relationships. The figure of the “woman” also represents a new question mark around his understanding of his own identity. The role of women having become increasingly blurred in our current society, has lead him to question the foundations of his irrational fear of them - which he believes may result in a loss of his status as a man.