Mikael Persbrandt – “Restauranten,” above
For the second installment of Gabba Gallery’s international series, Borderless, three Scandinavian artists represented by Norway’s Gallery Art Oslo are coming to Los Angeles.
The three are Ari Behn, Espen Eiborg, and Mikael Persbrandt, each both popular and highly regarded in Scandinavia. The exhibition opens March 23rd and runs through April 6th.
Behn is well-known in Norway and Denmark not only as an artist but through his best-selling collection of short stories, Sad as Hell, and a national television series, Ari and Per. His rich palette and sometimes whimsical figurative work is highly narrative. Vibrant pieces each tell a complex and highly emotional story, as with his work “The Crossing,” below.
Behn describes the piece as depicting an “opening to other worlds, and new, great experiences.” Reflecting passages in our lives, the final passage here takes us from birth to death, the work revealing his belief that experiences of transition “make miracles possible…” In this work, beneath a darkening sunset sky, a green explosion flies, labeled “Boom,” small nude human figures – one of which may represent a Christ-like figure – fall beneath a blue river into a strange new pink, a lustrous glowing shade enveloping them, infusing their demise with hope.
Ari Behn, “Swinging London,” above
An inveterate traveler, Behn’s “Swinging London” pays homage to a city he clearly loves. Written in bold black letters on the vividly colorful surface of the work are the words “My Dear Swingin’ London Revisited” and “With Love.” The iconic “Be Calm and…” signage is posted with the classic phrase “and Carry On,” among beautifully rendered post-card-like images of the Tower of London and the Bombay Bicycle Club. There is a melancholic air to some of Behn’s work, which may fit with the well-known story of his marriage to and divorce from princess Martha Louise of Norway. From his palette to his expressive mix of figurative and abstract work, Behn offers a riveting visual story.
Espen Eiborg, “Once Bitten Twice Shy,” above
Also from Norway, Eiborg draws viewers into a world where imagination and reality mix and merge, a day-dream of art, that is both complex and passionate, infused with a sense of happiness as well as with an ever-present awareness of darker human deeds. His mediums are varied, using acrylic and oil paints, oil crayons, spray paint, tar, and glue, working with both brush and palette knife. The artist also enhances and contrasts his images with a thick glaze from industrial varnish. In “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” Eiborg gives us a Storm Trooper from the Star Wars universe, a tiger, a gorgeous rose, beautiful women, and a lightning bolt. All are stand-out images that fuse together into a mysterious, evocative, and somehow boldly familiar place.
“Red Hat Kate,” by Espen Eiborg, above
According to Eiborg, “When a painting reaches a critical point, I see it as being in harmony and at rest after a long journey, barren and aged with the poetry of travel. It pays homage to water, earth, sky, wind and fire, the elements from which it originated.”
Mikael Persbrandt, “Bacon,” above
Swedish artist Mikael Persbrandt, is, like Behn, also an actor. Trained at Stockholm’s College for Artistic Education, his art and film career have paralleled in Scandinavia, starring in Susanne Bier’s Academy Award-winning In a Better World, and as one of the lead characters in the Netflix series Sex Education. In a solo exhibition of his art at the Gallery Sandgrunn, 80,000 visitors poured through the door to see his intense mixture of figurative and abstract expression, which though very different from Behn’s work, offers another fascinating and depth-filled perspective that blends these two approaches.
The haunting central blue figure in “Bacon” is both everyman, demon, and ghost; yellow lines around the chair in which the figure sits resemble the sides of a four-dimensional cube, or tesseract. The long horn cattle in an apparent stampede in “RUUS II,” seem to have arisen from a different dimension, a wonderfully eliptical web of sky and dust.
RUUS II by Mikael Persbrandt, above
This isn’t the first time the three artists have been paired together: in fact, their work has been shown in over 60 international galleries since 2017.
Gallery Art Oslo partners Kenneth Stensholt and Einar A. Lund have worked with these artists for more than two years, Lund relates. For the show at Gabba Gallery the trio of artists seemed an exciting fit. “They all have a unique, honest, and expressive artistic language which I liked. They go beneath the surface and explore both their own emotional life and inner lives of others. They are not afraid of exposing themselves or their own lives,” Lund asserts.
He adds “For a long time I have admired Mikael Persbrandt, who is not only one of the most famous and merited theater and film actors in Scandinavia, but who is also a great painter. Very few are aware of the fact that he was a painter prior to being an actor.”
As to Behn, Lund explains that the artist’s divorce “resulted in a series of self-reflective, colorful, expressive paintings, for which he has achieved great recognition,” which Lund deeply admires. Behn’s open expression of coping with depression through his artwork was and remains profoundly affecting.
Epson Eiborg, “Exploited,” above
About Eiborg, Lund notes “His pop art has been popular in Norway. When he lived in New York, he sold works to, among others, Robert Redford, Sean Penn, Oprah Winfrey, Dolce Gabbana, Jennifer Lopez and David Bowie.” In a truly meta moment, during the exhibition’s opening March 23rd, Eiborg will paint a portrait of an invited celebrity. To find out who – you’ll have to attend.
Lund says he hopes he can continue to work with Gabba curators Jason Ostro and Elena Jacobson, who introduced the Borderless series in April 2018 with art from Latin America. Their goal: to connect Los Angeles with a different part of the world through the language of art. With Borderless: Scandinavia, they continue to do just that.
Gabba Gallery is located at 3126 Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles. The exhibition opening runs from 7-11 p.m., March 23rd. For more information, visit https://www.gabbagallery.com/