INFO

Kjetil Kristensen (b. Stavanger, Norway) is an artist and culture producer. Initiator of projects presented in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Norway, Slovakia, Spain, and the USA. Alumnus of Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art, Oslo National Academy of the Arts and Valand Academy. He is the founder, and currently director of the nomadic Norwegian institution, Detroit Kunsthalle (DKh). Kjetil Kristensen is a member of the Young Artists' Society (UKS) and the Association of Norwegian Visual Artists (NBK).

STATEMENT

I create installations, film, and performance that deal with the position of the artist and art production, in an attempt at exploring and erasing the transition between art and life. I use auto-fictional approaches that provide for immediacy and realism. Furthermore, I'm interested in the tension between activism and the art institution, and how to create spaces which facilitate self- and social-critique. My practice embraces the temporary, the performative, the interdisciplinary collaboration, and the energy that arises, just as much as the object itself.

My artistic practice is about the role of the artist, its vulnerability and paradoxes. The inherent fragility in such a position, as well as the systems and the outside world the artist relies on. My work departs from auto-fictive stories about art-making and the contemporary life of the artist. My practice unfolds through various media and focuses on questions and problems rather than technique and craft. It uses me, my weaknesses and my own fears, as form, format, source and material. Fear of democratic fatigue, society's collapse, polarisation, and injustice. Outside the cube I work with different forms of resistance and democracy based on a thought that critique and creation work hand in hand, and that art in the public space and a modern democracy are somewhat the same, I believe the one cannot exist without the other.

I point out the potential of less attractive places and facilitate the viewer to discover new opportunities in the existing. I create experiences for the public, in places and through situations where unconventional presentation of contemporary art can occur, such as inside a sports arena, construction site or in an empty apartment. Furthermore, I create works that, with simple means, are direct encounters with and illuminate the complexity of the surroundings. I use activist aesthetics, bring in colleagues in my own productions, shift concepts and formats, and I try to obscure transitions between performance and actions.

ABOUT

Kjetil Kristensen is known for unconventional storytelling through contemporary art. In his work, the object instantiates a microspace of freedom for the viewer: multiple and multivalent narratives invite the viewer to read, reconsider, and redefine the work for their own purposes. The narrative, the visual, and the concrete are in constant conversation; the viewer moves around and between instantiations of the work and creates a unique subjective experience of the piece. Kristensen works with a variety of media and conceptual strategies led by a focus on questions and problems rather than technique and craft; his work often displays a special emphasis on performative strategies that exploit site- and project-specific constraints and affordances. His works have dealt with the position of the artist; power, institutions, and geopolitics; and the artmaking process. He approaches these questions with an aesthetic of corrupted triviality, vulnerable humour, and poetic darkness. His work engages equally with the white cube and the public sphere, building bridges and exposing junctures between the two spaces. As a teenager Kristensen first exhibited on the Norwegian west coast in 1998, and today he shows and produces work in independent and institutional contexts in Norway and abroad as an artist, occasional curator/exhibition-maker, conceptual residency facilitator, and producer of projects.

In his curatorial practice, Kristensen focuses on finding new alternatives to the gallery space and developing diverse strategies for the valuation of contemporary art. He’s founder of Kristensen Contemporary and co-founder of September Split. He co-founded the collaborative curatorial platform and professional skateboard-art-team Contemporary Cruise Crew, as well as the artist-run studio space VORTA at Lokomotivverkstedet in Middelalderparken, Oslo. Kristensen is currently working on the development of Detroit Kunsthalle — a laboratory for research within the field of art & public space.

Kristensen holds a BA in Contemporary Art from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art with an emphasis on naturecultures, situatedness, and identity politics in relation to art (2011). He participated in the inaugural edition of the Independent Study Program (ISP) at Rogaland Kunstsenter (2017). Kristensen holds an MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in the MFA program on Art & Public Space (MAPS), a two-year artistic research programme with an emphasis on contemporary art as a critical spatial practice, providing a platform for new social and political encounters (2018). Kristensen is a registered art consultant for KORO (Public Art Norway) and he studied at the curatorial one-year-programme on Commissioning and Curating Contemporary Public Art at the Valand Academy at the University of Gothenburg (2019). Kristensen is working from the idea that the curator's role should be, and is posed as conceit or statement or question alongside that of the artist, and that this process should not be stopped through excess projection around the historical construction of the idea of what an artist may or may not represent.

For inquiries, send an e-mail to post[at]kjetilkristensen.com

IV: 'Eternally Lost, Forever Gained'
temporary and participatory monument

installation: textile, tape, rope, wood, pontoon, metal, plastic, paint, plus announced Open Call for the city of Pardubice

120 m2

'Eternally Lost, Forever Gained' consist of an open call together with a temporarily transformed swimming spot by the Elbe in the Na špici park, created for 'Tvárnost Paměti (Malleable Memory)', curated by Šárka Zahálková for Gampa / Galerie města Pardubice

credits: Erling Knudsen, Josef Čevora, Offcity workshops created with Nikola Březinová

opening reception Saturday, August 22, on display to October 11, Na špici park, Pardubice 2020

Image © Magdalena Kotkowska

V: 'Blue Chip Baby'
exhibition

Duckert Detroit was a collaboration between Kjetil Kristensen and Helene Duckert, the exhibition 'Blue Chip Baby' featured collaborative works by artists Brage Sunde and Dev Dhunsi

installation: sculpture, print, jewellery, painting, photography, textiles, text, ready-made, cane by Henning Linaker

55 m2

materials: mixed media (shortlist: aerosol spray, aquarelle, glue, tape, bamboo, human hair, various paper, various plastics, cardboard, Tuborg cans, two component eco-epoxy, wood, glass, water, neon and indigo pigment, OxyContin, rubber, 18k gold, cotton, aluminium, distress hand flare)

performative reading from the sculpture How to Make It in “America” Selected Works 2020-2025 (2020) at the opening night by Duckert Detroit, texts by Geir Haraldseth, Tommy Olsson and Olga Schmedling

credits: Erling Knudsen, Geir Backe Altern, Sayed Sattar Hasan, Scott Joseph, Prosjektskolen, Fellesverkstedet, Norsk Fotofagskole

opening reception Friday, March 6, but closed only a few days later due to the COVID-19 outbreak
Babel Visningsrom for Kunst, Trondheim 2020

excerpts from Duckert Detroit — 'Blue Chip Baby' also shown in group exhibitions at Stavanger Kunstmuseum (2020), Trafo Kunsthall (2021) and Vestfold Kunstsenter (2021)