Opening reception with the Artist on Thursday September 19 from 18-20.

‘Veståsen’ is a new series of landscapes from the eponymous mountain area in Tinn, Telemark, close to Per Berntsen’s home. Resulting from field work in 2018 and 2019 these large archival inkjet prints on baryta paper represents a recognizable theme in Berntsen’s oeuvre, the unpopulated landscape, but they mark a significant development as they are the first colour images he until now exhibits. It’s with great excitement we now present 12 images from this series in the gallery’s main space.

To take a look back, and give context to the recent colour works, we have selected from Berntsen’s archives a group of small vintage silver-gelatin prints from the 1980’s and 1990’s that concurrently will be shown in our annex space.

Per Berntsen (b. 1953) is one of the veterans of photographic art in Norway and an important advocate for the medium’s rise and acceptance on the local art scene. Berntsen was educated at Trent Polytechnic / Derby College of Art, England, during the second half of the 1970s and has exhibited actively since his debut in 1980 at Fotogalleriet in Oslo. Important recent projects are the 2008 publication and exhibition in Galleri Riis, Generator, documenting 100 generator halls from hydroelectric power plants in southern Norway, Down Under Up North in 2010, a documentation and art project about the mining industry in Kirkenes. In 2013-2015 Berntsen set out to undertake an artistic documentation of the taiga, the landscape connecting the northern parts of Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway. This project resulted in the publication and exhibition tour “Metsä”, in 2018.

His works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, AKO Art Foundation/Sørlandets Kunstmuseum in Kristiansand and the Oslo City Art Collections in Oslo.
Per Berntsen lives and works in Tinn, Telemark.