Galleri Riis’ presentation at Market Art Fair 2022 features a constellation of new works by Morten Andenæs and Éva Mag.

A benevolent face towering above us; an animal in the throes of pain, pleasure or some other supposedly mixed emotion, an orange with an unmistakably human visage and a kitchen chair, broken in two.
Like Andenæs’ work over the past decade, these images revolve around fundamental questions pertaining to picture-making. What role do images play in how we perceive the world and each other, and how can we possibly mirror the complexity of experienced reality without reducing or pigeonholing it?

The four images on display toy with this relationship between figure and ground. In them familiar objects are depicted with a blend of picture-book matter of factness and a more ambiguous and anthropomorphic approach. Like the intricacies around the dinner table (where the chair perhaps once stood), these images speak of conflicting emotions – the desperate need to be seen, the pain of others, dependency and autonomy and, the lure of images themselves.

Éva Mag’s works are powered by their materials and the artist is along for the ride, taking on the role of a messenger. Mental states are captured with forceful manipulation of heavy materials as steel, clay and brass; cut, welded and fired, assembled and dismembered, rearranged and assembled again. Mag brings forward complex and personal images of exoneration and decay, hope and despair, lust and disgust.

The Brass Gown exposes a naked mahogany torso, an allegory of material and bodily desires. Confronted with the sculpture, you experience the sensation of a caress on your body, or the absence thereof.
The Ghost is the result of a wrestling match with a large slab of clay, forced into the shape of a fold, harnessed and contained with textiles. A body contracting and closing in on itself, an act of defense or escape. The Tree, a respiratory system petrified. Grief and pain have entered this corpus. A glowing Brass Painting carries the imprint of a clay body, angelic and ephemeral.

About the Artists:

Éva Mag received her artistic education at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm where she graduated in 2015. Mag works with narratives about the body, both the human and the sculptural. She is interested in the history of sculpture, impossible amorphous forms, strict formal modernist morphology as well as proportions and geometric balance. Another part of her practice is devoted to an archive of the work process. In photographs, she presents pure fabrics of hollow bodies, a testimony from the time before the fabrics are filled with clay and wax. She is also concerned with social aspects of art, such as sculpture workshops and working with choreography and performance. In 2019 she staged the performance “Dead Matter Moves” for Performa 19 in New York. Mag was featured in her largest solo exhibition to date, ‘Det finns en plan för det här’, at Bonniers Konsthall in the spring of 2020, and parts from this expansive exhibition was shown at Galleri Riis in Oslo in the fall the same year. In september 2021, she presented ceramic sculptures in a pop-up exhibition with Galleri Riis at POMP Space in Stockholm and staged a new performance for “Disappearing Berlin”, produced by Schinkel Pavillion.

Morten Andenæs (b. 1979) received his artistic education at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and now lives and works in Oslo. During the last decade Andenæs has made a distinct mark on the Norwegian photography scene with his concise and poetic imagery as well as his literary texts on photography and its place in his culture at large. In Andenæs’ practice, the photograph in all its myriad expressions, genres and uses is under scrutiny. Through dense images of people, animals, landscapes and objects, the artist creates photographs that reflect our fantasies and desires. Andenæs has exhibited extensively in Norway and abroad, in addition to publishing several photobooks and books of his writings. In 2019 Andenæs held his largest solo exhibition to date, I remind me of you at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, and in 2020 his work was shown at Henie Onstad Arts Centre. His work is featured in numerous public collections in Norway and abroad.