Jan Groth
Jan Groth

In connection with the 2017 Bergen International Festival Exhibition, Bergen Kunsthall has the pleasure of presenting an extensive catalogue that revolves around Jan Groth’s art, with a particular focus on the works in the exhibition.

After 50 active years on the international art scene, it is precisely this innovative topicality and presence—both physically in the Kunsthall and in contemporary art discourse in general—that is reflected in the Groth publication. With photographs of the exhibits (drawings on paper, two major wall drawings, one tapestry and several sculptures), where several of the smallest drawings are reproduced in the 1:1 aspect ratio, and with new texts that contextualize Groth’s oeuvre, both art-historically and nationally versus internationally, the book gives a clear picture of where the artist stands today.

Steinar Sekkingstad, one of the curators of the exhibition and contributor to the book, addresses both and discusses in his text how Groth’s works in an art-historical perspective are often linked to both (Nordic) lyrical abstraction and (American) intellectual Late Modernism, while Sekkingstad’s own interpretation goes towards universalistic formalism: “Rather than national or geographical identity markers, Groth’s distinctive form of abstraction might also represent universalist, transnational and archetypal formalism. Groth’s drawings and objects have a “charged “or” or “animated” quality.

Instead of categories such as abstraction or figuration, Groth’s signs seem to take on a materialized existence or mode of being in line with other things in the world. The form is not necessarily deputizing for something else, nor is it a readable sign of an underlying meaning; it is rather an expression of something generally, even universally human. “