Opening reception with the artist on Thursday, January 25th, from 18-20.

We are pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Sverre Wyller, his 13th solo exhibition with the gallery.

Last year marked the start of a new extensive series of egg tempera paintings on linen, which later this year will be shown at the Westend Krankenhaus in Berlin. This is both a working hospital and an active exhibition space, and Wyller´s exhibition will be part of its «Grossaustellung» – program, where selected works are installed in corridors and other public areas throughout the buildings. The exhibitions remain on view for a year, are open to the public, and require a considerable effort for a single artist.

For Wyller, the starting point was to define the Westend series of paintings as a developing project in the sense that the concept and formal framework are allowed to develop as the work is being made. The paintings are executed considering the physical space of a lively hospital – which is far from the pristine white cube identity of a gallery – and the existential aspects of illness and health, life and death, are inseparable elements in this context.

As can be observed in the works selected for this exhibition, all from 2017 and ranging from 80 × 90 cm to 190 × 220 cm, a vertical division of the picture plane has gradually developed and thus created a necessary structure for exploring painterly issues and possibilities, as well as the notion of duality and separation. This structure will also enhance the reading of the serial aspect of the works, and conjoin an estimated total of seventy paintings which will be completed this coming spring.

The title of the series, Westend, is taken directly from the hospital in Berlin, but it also evokes the melancholy of the term Das Abendland – a literary expression describing the end of an era. Westend might have a more pragmatic clarity.

In the period 1979-84 Sverre Wyller (b 1953 in Oslo) studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo as well as the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. His artistic practice encompasses painting and sculpture in a variety of materials and techniques, sometimes on a monumental scale. Sverre Wyller is represented in major museums as well as several important public and private collections throughout Scandinavia.

He currently works in Maridalen, Oslo as well as in temporary studios in Berlin and Belgrade.