Trude Viken
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. The smell of oil paint lingers on and tones, both earthy and unnatural, elicit both eroticism and repulsion. Viken’s work requires an audience for its physicality, a terrain of oil paint. In this way, they are landscapes of weather as unpredictable as mood. 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, they seduce through their psychological penetration. 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. Viken's first solo exhibition in New York was at Fortnight Institute, New York in 2018.
B. 1969, Lødingen, Norway
Lives and works in Oslo, Norway
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2022: Double Portraits, OTP Copenhagen, Denmark
2022: Independent Art Fair, Fortnight Institute, NY
2022: Midnight Activities, Belenius Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
2021: Midnight Theater, Fortnight Institute, New York, NY
2021: Night Eyes, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Norway
2021: The Tendon Blanket Goes Down at Nightfall, Buer Gallery, Oslo, Norway
2019: Unmasked, M + B, Los Angeles, USA
2018: Faces and Traces, Fortnight Institute, New York, NY
2016: Maskefall, curated by Palazzo Stabile, Galleri Albin Upp, Oslo, Norway
2015: Debutantveggen, Galleri Ramfjord, Oslo, Norway
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
2021: I Have My Eye On You, Everyday Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
2021: Hunters in the Snow, curated by Fortnight Institute, 303 Gallery, New York, NY
2020: Constellations, Buer Gallery, Oslo, Norway
2020: Østlandsutstillingen, Kunstbanken Hedmark Kunstsenter, Buskerud Kunstsenter & Østfold Kunstsenter
2020: Ryszard Warsinski + Trude Viken, Bærum Kunsthall, Oslo
2020: Lit Naits, Mexico (Oh, Brother), QB Gallery, Oslo
2019: Edvard Munch`s studio, Oslo, with Markus Brendmoe, Stein Koksvik & Yngvar Larsen
2019: Velvet Ropes, Gallery Golsa, Oslo
2018: Bærum Kunsthall, grant exhibition
2018: Galleri Fineart, Oslo, Sommerutstillingen
2017: Østlandsutstillingen, 500 years of the Reformation, Oslo and Kiel, Germany
2016: Borders and Boundaries, Bærum Kunsthall
2016: Åpen dør, Kommunegården, Bærum BKIB - Bildende Kunstnere i Bærum
2016: Galleri Ramfjord, Oslo, grant exhibition
2015: In Between, Bærum Kunsthall
2015: Romeriksutstillingen, Ullensaker Kunstforening
2015: Romeriksutstillingen, Lørenskog Kunstforening
2015: Galleri Ramfjord, Oslo, grant exhibition
2015: Kunstland, Lomsjøen
2014: SUM Rådhusgalleriet, Oslo, with Eva Galligani & Eline Huitfelt
2013: Galleri Albin Upp, Oslo
2012: Rådhusgalleriet, Oslo, graduation exhibition – DTK/Det Tverrfagelige Kunstinstitutt
EDUCATION
2012-2015: Studied with the painter Markus Brendmoe, Oslo, Norway
2009-2012: Det tverrfaglige kunstinstitutt (DTK), Bærum, Norway
Publications
2021: Night Eyes, Vestfossen Kunstlabratorium, Ansten Press
2018: Zine, Drawings, Innen Books, Zurich, Switzerland
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Why Surrealism Now?
Will Griffith, The Baer Faxt, May 13, 2022 -
Trude Viken | Artforum
Hannah Stamler, Artforum, October 1, 2021 -
The Ward Masquerade and Other Poems
Kirsten Irving, Evergreen, July 30, 2020 -
Den norske hjelpepleierens bilder har skapt furore i New York
Hanna Stoltenberg, D2, July 19, 2018 -
Trude Viken, “Faces and Traces”
Time Out, May 21, 2018 -
Faces + Traces
John Martin Tilley, Office, May 16, 2018
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Trude Viken
Midnight Theater 24 Jun - 17 Jul 2021The people that are all one person in these paintings don’t seem light, new, handily sketched or birthed in ease. All the paintings are clogged with duration: ochre sours, cobalt...Read more -
Hunters in the Snow
Curated by Fortnight Institute at 303 Gallery, NYC 6 Feb - 7 Mar 2021Pieter Bruegel’s Series of the Month depicts January as a solemn time, one in which the struggle for survival is most acute. The month is captured in his painting, Hunters...Read more -
TRUDE VIKEN
Faces and Traces 16 Apr - 17 Jun 2018Fortnight Institute is pleased to present Faces and Traces, a solo exhibition by Norwegian artist Trude Viken. For her solo American debut, Viken presents a collection of 100 small A4-format...Read more
"At Trude Viken ikke kom inn på Kunstakademiet stinker bullshit," Subjekt, June, 2021
"Humoresker över tillvaron," Omkonst, June 4, 2021 | Link
"Malerier Som Treffer Deg Hardt Imagen (Paintings that hit you hard in the stomach)," Morgenbladet, June 4, 2021 | Link
"The Ward Masquerade" and Other Poems, Evergreen, July 2020 | link
Den norske hjelpepleierens bilder har skapt furore i New York, D2, Hanna Stoltenberg, July 2018 | Link
Trude Viken, Faces and Traces, Time Out NY, Howard Halle, May 2018 | Link
Faces and Traces, Office Magazine, John Martin Tilley, May 2018