The Norwegian artist Tage Fredheim plays guitar and paints. Already in primary and secondary school he received recognition and won prizes for his drawings and water color works.
Advanced tuition he got from the Arts and Crafts College in Oslo where he was a visiting student for one year under Egil Weiglin. The year after he was formally admitted both to the Arts and Crafts School (SHKS) and the Art Academy, and after choosing the Art Academy partly because of generous financial grants, he was a master student for five years under the Professors Alf Jørgen Aas and Knut Rose.
Fredheim has several separate - and group exhibitions behind him, in addition to being
purchased by the Norwegian Theater, Ullevaal Hospital, Eidsvold district court, Royal Carribbean Cruise Lines and numerous private and corporate collections.
In this presentation of paintings we get to see his processing of two different art forms.
According to the artist this corresponds to a series of paintings he began in 2008, where he distances
from the figurative direction that prevailed in his art at this time.
His work on this site is therefore mainly a result of the purely painterly components in his
pictures. As he himself says: I wanted to detach myself from the given ways of finishing a painting.

- I wanted to try an extended new approach. However, in some of the paintings Fredheim takes base
in certain abstract expressions as he was taught by Professor Knut Rose at the Academy. This happens as the painter works on a loose beginnings in abstract sketches he has created on the canvas. Instead to condense and concretize the abstract elements in the direction of a figurative motif, Fredheim allows purely painterly elements continue to dominate the process. This creates a slide into a new domain of painting and a
further progress toward a freer expression - he struggles to keep the images open to new directions
and meanings. This creates the space for a new kind of aesthetic that, according to himself,
are more distinctive and less conventional. The result ends with paintings that work by virtue of
itself, not on the basis of rigid conventions or external references.
The works can be viewed individually or in conjunction. Grouping images
side by side also creates an interesting interaction between the basic timbre of the individual works.
In some paintings Fredheim lays geometric structures or landscape features in bottom
before paint coats are applied, often in 20 to 30 transparent layers in a single image. In these
works there is a dynamic between the previous ideas and the wider movement
which acts as a structural model.
Distinct characteristics of the artist's paintings are texture and coloration - an end result of simple but thoughtful paint application
and structures suggested in the abstract motifs.
Text: Hilde Hernes, art historian













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