Tone Vigeland
Ut i rommet
Sculptures, Installation and Objects
February 19 – March 27, 2026

Opening reception will be held on Thursday, February 19 from 6-8 PM.

Two years after Tone Vigeland’s passing, we are pleased to present a small retrospective exhibition featuring a selection of sculptures, objects and maquettes from the last 25 years of her life. In addition, examples of her groundbreaking jewelry from the 1970s and 1980s, which point toward to her later sculptures and objects, will be on view.

Tone Vigeland (1938-2024) was known as one of the most significant studio jewelry artists of the postwar era. Since the early 1960’s, she exhibited actively and was featured in innumerable arts and crafts surveys internationally. From 1995-98, a critically acclaimed retrospective exhibition of her jewelry traveled from Norway to the U.S. and Japan.

In 1996, Galleri Riis presented the first sculpture by Tone Vigeland. Made from countless tiny parts of copper and nickel-plated bronze, it was her first free-standing object. The technique and materials, as well as the stylistic idiom, were derived from her previous work with jewelry, where organic movement of surface and form is obtained through the attachment of numerous components to a mesh or flexible core. Her works, whether jewelry or sculpture, are always characterized by craftmanship and innovative exploration of the properties of the metal, and mostly crafted by her own hands.

In the fall of 2000, Vigeland presented her first large solo exhibition of sculptures at Galleri Riis. The exhibition was comprised of six large sculptures on classic gallery podiums. Strips, tubes and flakes made from lead attached to grids and mesh of plastic or steel gave rise to sensual forms and surfaces in some of the sculptures, and a more rigid, constructed expression in others.

In her following three exhibitions with Galleri Riis (2004 to 2011), Vigeland left the podiums behind and took on the space with simple and delicate works, as well as installations comprising numerous parts, extending from the walls or hanging from the ceiling – playing with, and off, the architecture of the gallery. The materials were steel tubes, rods and piano wire, sometimes with silver joints and fittings. The style was both elegant and monumental.

Vigeland was the Festival Exhibitor at Bergen Kunsthall (2014), arguably Norway’s most important solo exhibition for a living artist, and in 2017 she was honored with a retrospective exhibition at Die Neue Samlung in Munich. In 2022, Vigeland completed her final work, a large freestanding outdoor sculpture in stainless steel and bronze, commissioned by Kistefos Museum in Jevnaker.

Tone Vigeland’s works can be found in the collections of Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst in Oslo, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.

For more information on Tone Vigeland: https://galleririis.com/artists/27