Stenersenmuseet

Access to Life
June 20 - August 9, 2009

Artist list: Jonas Bendiksen, Jim Goldberg, Alex Majoli, Steve McCurry, Paolo Pellegrin, Gilles Peress, Eli Reed and Larry Towell

In 'Access to Life', eight Magnum photographers portrayed people in nine countries around the world before and four months after they began antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. Here were faces, voices, and stories representing those millions of people who by now would be dead if not for access to free antiretroviral drugs. But there are also the stories of those for whom treatment came too late or where tuberculosis or other diseases brought their lives to an end – showing how the fight for access to AIDS treatment is a difficult one, filled with set-backs as well as success.

Artist list: Kader Attia, Kristin Bergaust/Alexis Parra, Kjetil Berge, Sergio Bernardes/Guilherme Vaz, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Albert Chong, Christopher Cozier, Heri Dono/Jompe, Andrew Dosunmu, Theo Eshetu, Satch Hoyt, Alfredo Jaar, Kimsooja, Yvette Mattern, Salem Mekuria, Lamia Naji, Olu Oguibe, Eder Santos, Paulo Vivacqua, Vu Nhat Tan

The Stenersen Museum and Du store verden! collaborate on this exhibition

Street Art, art or vandalism? This exhibition by Rolf M. Aagaard, photographer for the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, was the result of his genuine interest for this particular expression. For years he has been walking in the streets of main cities in Norway and elsewhere to sample examples of Street Art. Making Street Art is restricted and therefore executed anonymously. Street Art pops up unannounced, and disappears without anybody’s knowledge. The most celebrated artists who started as a Street Artist in the 1980’s are Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. The particular formal language developed in the streets of New York before it was accepted by the international art scene.

Photo Finnish - The Helsinki School

February 8 - April 29, 2007

The exhibition focuses upon the contemporary art scene of Finnish photographers. The presentation is among the important ones shown in Norway of international photography. Among the about 30 participant artists we recognize Ilkka Halso, Nanna Hänninen, Sanna Kannisto, Sandra Kantanen, Pertti Kekarainen, Ola Kolehmainen, Riitta Päiväläinen och Santeri Tuori, who have already achived their international fame.

Most of the artists are showed for the first time in Norway.

Marian Heyerdahl
"Bodies"
August 24 – October 8, 2006

Nine huge sculptures in porcelain, produced in China, were placed on the terrace just outside the museum's entrance door. As big size bodies or male sexual symbols they might give assosiations to some fertility cult, or to public, classical sculptures.

The African-American artist Marita Dingus exhibited both recent and older works in her solo exhibition "Look Again". Trash transformed into art; the relationship between art and handicraft, her experience as an African-American woman and her strong ties to Africa are some of the themes which run throughout her works. The exhibition showed both installations and sculptural pieces in textile and glass.

In her first solo exhibition at The Stenersen Museum, "Bipolar Horizon", Siri Hermansen introduced the viewer to Pyramiden, the bleak and abandoned settlement on Svalbard, through a series of photographs and instal-lations. The artistic project deals with social issues and political downfall, while focussing on the negative consequences of consumer society.

This exhibition displayed more and less well-known Magnum photographers, who have traveled the world with their cameras. The images present the joy of football first and foremost, but also touch on other themes, such as fair play, gender roles, commercialisation, religion, etc. This exhibition is on tour around the world, and is produced by the Goethe Institute in connection with the World Championship of Football in Germany in 2006.

This exhibition was composed of drawings, paintings, objects/installations. The installations are made from pvc, fluorescent tubes, plexiglass and paintings/drawings. The rapid, associative hand of Stein Koksvik’s drawings are carried into the paintings, creating a fundamental tone of frequent breaks and whims. The objects have a distinct material concept and balance between stolid asceticism and expressive fragility.

The artists, all of whom were born, or are active, in Norway, share in common a degree of isolation form the main structures of the local art scene and correspondingly strong sense of identification with other cultures and different types of sociological reality. They push beyond the boundaries of their own education and enlightenment.