Marianne Hurum: It’s Haunted

It is not a big surprise that the history of portrait painting is closely connected to power and wealth. If one had the means and the desire to be memorialised, to commission a portrait was a way of securing one’s remembrance even after the worldly departure.

Marianne Hurum is not a portrait painter, but she is interested in portraiture painting from a class perspective—its history and tradition, its cultural and political significance, and what the center cannot hold.

Compositions happening at the edges feature painting in which the motifs have been pushed out to the edges, as well as paintings that are nothing but edges. Two sculptures ‘painting sheds’ render the total overview impossible and serve as vantage points from which to view the paintings, while SIGNAL itself has been altered, corners removed and softened round and smooth, enveloping everything that enters in its embrace. A ghostly absence, what is being removed. What surrounds the center becomes the main subject. A sensation of haunting, what happens in the corner of your eye.

The deep formal research into the painterly medium that characterises Marianne Hurum’s work is not dry, nor detached. It is full of playful and existential pairings between art and life, work and enjoyment, social engagement and solitude. It is a practice that blends artistic research with imaginative and political thinking because solidarity and organisation are fundamentally important to her as an artist and as a member of society.

Marianne Hurum is based between Oslo and Copenhagen where she works as associate professor at The Royal Danish Academy. She has been involved in trade union work through UKS (Young Artists’ Society Union), where she served as Chair of the Board, and NBK (The Association of Norwegian Visual Artists).

The exhibition is supported by OCA (Office for Contemporary Art Norway) and Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond (Norwegian Visual Artists Fund).