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Rune Olsen
About
Rune Olsen is a Norwegian artist living in New York. Since his first solo show in 1997 at UKS in Norway he has exhibited widely throughout USA and Europe, including The Bronx Museum in New York, the Drawing Biennial at Kunstnernes Hus in Norway and the 2005 Istanbul Biennial. His work has been reviewed in Art Forum, Sculpture Magazine, Boston Globe, Austin Chronicle, New York Times, and Star Ledger. Rune Olsen has won 11 awards from The Norwegian Government, including a distinguished Three-year work grant for young emerging artists. He has been awarded the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship, a studio residency with Artist Alliance in New York, a place at the renowned Art Omi International Artists Residency, and an Artist in Residency with Headlands Center for the Arts. Rune Olsen’s sculptures are featured in the ground-breaking exhibition The Sex Lives of Animals on permanent display at Museum of Sex in New York. Rune Olsen is a 2009 fellow in sculpture from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He currently lives and works in Paris, completing a year-long residency at CITE International. Through installations, sculptures, and flat-works I conduct sociologically informed investigations into the corporeal and mental boundaries of desire, power structures and society. I want to confront complex, emotional and often marginalized subject matters while experimenting with the audience’s responsiveness to becoming participators in the sculptural space. Though we can live in our minds, as an animal the physical is vastly more exciting—arousing our urges, hijacking our minds, and generating obsessive thoughts and questions. How do essential instincts govern our actions? What makes us behave in a certain way? How do we make decisions? How do instincts affect these decisions and how do these impulses relate to the instincts of other animals? I explore these questions by meticulously researching real and recorded imagery of animals and people at their most primal. What emerges from this research are life-size sculptures that I form through the process of constructing armatures; fleshing them out with massive amounts of archival tape and aluminum-foil; and finishing with a violent application of graphite markings and taped lines. These familiar, cheap and easily malleable (“social”) materials allow me to work with a sense of immediacy that is enhanced with the inset glass eyes—hand-painted in Germany to look like my eyes. The contrasting relationship between the explicative figure, the glass eyes, and the intuitive application of graphite markings and taped lines enhances the visceral expression of my work and conveys the intensity and urgency of instinctual behavior that is both arousing and transformative.
“Rune Olsen’s beautifully composed, often shocking, masking tape-covered sculptures are some of the most visually seductive and physically intriguing figurative works being produced today. His three-dimensional tableaux, representing man and beast in various positions of sexual dominance and compliance, interweave personal narrative with mind-expanding revelations about natural-science.”
Francine Koslow Miller
Revising Natural and Sculptural History, Rune Olsen,
Sculpture Magazine, January/February 2009 (6 page article)
(The Contemporary Figure) … Read More
- Location
- New York, United States
- Website
- http://www.runeolsen.net
Installations, Solo and Two -People Exhibitions
2010Hanes Gallery at Wake Forest University, curator Victor Faccinto, NC, USA
-Samson Projects, Boston, USA
2008 Museum of Sex, The Sex Life of Animals, New York, USA (Permanent Exhibition)
2007 Samson Projects, Rune Olsen, Boston, USA
2006 Red Saw Gallery, Escaping Freedom, Newark, USA
2004 Samson Projects, The Urge That Binds, Boston, USA
2002 Islip Art Museum, Auto Parts, Project 02, Carriage House installation, New York, USA
2001 Bronx Museum of Arts, CAP, SuperVention, New York, USA
1997 Unge Kunstneres Samfund (UKS), Leap of Faith, Oslo, Norway
Selected Group Exhibitions
2009Michael Steinberg Fine Art, ruiNation curator Jerry Kearns, New York USA
-Galerie Susan Nielsen, Rock Paper Scissors, Paris, France
-Naomi Arin Contemporary, Drawing Blank, USA
- VoltaNY, Solo project w/Samson Projects, New York, USA
- Chasama, Darkness Descends, curator M. Sellinger and C. Vassallo, New York, USA
2008 Exit Art, Labyrinth, New York, USA
- The Sherman Gallery - Boston University, The Exquisite Line, curator Lynne Cooney, USA
- Drawing Biennial, Kunstnernes Hus, Norway
- Governors Island, In-Site, public project w/Sculptors Guild, New York, USA
- Volta4, Special Project, Basel, Switzerland
- Eyewash, Art-Walk, New York, USA
2007 Moti Hasson Gallery, Untitled (On Paper,) New York, USA
- Richmond Center for Visual Arts, Western Michigan University, Keeping it Real,
curated by Jerry Kearns, USA
- Barbara Gillman Gallery, Head to Head, advised by Judith Page, Miami, USA
- Trygve Lie Gallery, Norwegian Artists in New York II, USA
- Art Cologne, Sculptors Guild, Germany
- The Art Lab@Robert Smiths Hotel, Cabinet of Curious Ties, curator Koan Jeff Baysa, USA
- Rupert Ravens Contemporary, Sanctuary, curated by Rupert Ravens, USA
- Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Human Eyes, curated by Kristen Dodge, USA
2006Volitant Gallery, Take me to bed or lose me forever, curator Leona Scull-Hons, TX, USA
- Gallery 744, Newark between Us, curated by Rupert Ravens, USA
- Cuchifritos Gallery, Working Space 06, curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud and Zeina Assaf
- 3rd Ward, Nature More, curated by Peter Dudek, New York, USA
- Hillwood Art Museum, Archival to Contemporary: Six Decades of the Sculptors Guild,
curated by Jerelyn Hanrahan, New York, USA
2005Istanbul Biennial, Waterways, artSUMER, curated by Renee Vara, Istanbul, Turkey
- Office of the Manhattan Borough President, Artists Alliance Inc, New York, USA
- Venice Biennial, Waterways, curated by Renee Vara, Venice, Italy
- Exit Art, Homomuseum, New York, USA
- Smack Mellon, T-Zone, curated by Peter Dudek, New York, USA
2004 Arthouse at The Jones Center, New American Talent, curated by Jerry Saltz, TX, USA
- Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art, Timeless/Timeliness, curated by Dominique Nahas,
- Samson Projects, Super Salon, Boston, USA
2002 Dining Haul: Unpacked no.4, curated by Alisoun Meehan, New York, USA
2001 G-Module, Perfect Plastic, Paris, France
2000 Danielle Arnaud Gallery, Brussels Art Fair, London, UK
1998 Kunstnernes Hus, Hstutstillingen, Oslo, Norway
1997 Atelier G9, Geniale I, litt likt og litt forskjellig, Oslo, Norway
1997 G.U.N., Gnu Nug-Nug, Oslo, Norway
1996 Atlerier G9, Klar, Freidig, G, Oslo, Norway
Grants and Awards
2009 NYFA Fellow in Sculpture, USA
-Sculpture Space, Residency, Utica, USA
-Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Prosjektsttte, Norway
2008 Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Prosjektsttte, Norway
2007 Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Prosjektsttte, Norway
2006 Statens Kunstnerstipend, Work Grant for Younger/Newly Established Artists 2006, Norway
- Art Omi International Artists Residency, New York, USA
2005 Artists Alliance Inc.s (AAI) LES-RSP Residency Program, New York, USA
- Statens Kunstnerstipend, Work Grant for Younger/Newly Established Artists 2005, Norway
- New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship, sculpture, USA
2004 Office for Contemporary Art, Exhibition support, Norway
2003 Creative Capital, Professional Development Workshop, New York, USA
- Statens Kunstnerstipend, Work Grant for Younger/Newly Established Artists 2003, Norway
2002 Aljira Emerge 2003, Professional Development for Emerging Artists, Newark, USA
- Office for Contemporary Art, Exhibition support, Norway
- Royal Norwegian Consulate General, Exhibition support, New York, USA
1999 Statens Kunstnerstipend, Etableringsstipend, Norway
1997 Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Prosjektsttte, Norway
1997 Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Prosjektsttte to Atelier G9, Norway
1997 Norsk Kultur Fond, Debutant sttte, Norway
1996 Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Prosjektsttte to Atelier G9, Norway
Bibliography
2009 Useless #9, Evolve, interview with Sarah Jacobs, May 2009
-NO-Magazine, article by Signe Pris, April 2009
-Dagbladet, To Much for New York, article by Randi Fuglehaug, March 7, 2009, Norway
- Sculpture Magazine, article by Francine Koslow Miller, Jan/Feb 2009, USA
- Wallpaper Magazine, January 2009
2008 Village Voice, July 23-29, 2008 by Araceli Cruz
- Time Out New York, July 24-30, 2008, article by Erin Clements
- The Scientist, July 25, 2008, article by Bob Grant
- The New York Post, July 28, 2008, article by Barbara Hoffman
- Bloomberg News, July 24, 2008, article by Patrick Cole
- Wired, July 24, 2008, article by Brandon Keim
- Sculpture Magazine, review by Christine Temin, May 2008, USA
- Exit Express, article by Glenn Harper, May 2008, Spain
- Dagbladet, review by Harald Flor, April 6, 2008, Norway
- Art in America, review by Ann Wilson Lloyd, January 2008, USA
2007 Art Forum, review by Francine Koslow Miller, September, 2007, USA
- LoDown Magazine, Beastmaster, interview, November 2007, Germany
- Boston Globe, Animal Instincts, by Cate McQuaid, July 26, 2007
- Boston Globe, Animal World, by Cate McQuaid, May 17, 2007, USA
- Innsida, nskjer provosera, by Gro Molland, May 13, 2007, Norway
- Sunnhordland, Me er ogs dyr, by Jane Junger, May 14, 2007, Norway
2006 NJN News, Art that Shocks, by Michael Aron, December 27, 2006, USA
2005 The New York Times, Art in Review: Homomuseum by Holland Cotter, June 24, USA
- Gay City News, Homomuseum: Vast Space Dwarfs Huge Inquiry by F. Holliday, June 23,
- The Boston Globe, Arts Calender by Cate McQuaid, January 6, 2005, USA
- South End News, Its a jungle out there by Thomas Garvey, January 6, 2005,
- Big Red & Shiny, Review: Rune Olsen @ Samson Projects by Jason Dean, Issue 16, USA
2004 Star-Ledger, Timely/Timeliness by Dan Bischoff, August 15, 2004, review, USA
- Austin Chronicle, New American Talent, Robi Polgar, August 6, 2004, review, USA
, … Read More
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