Tore Magne Gundersen 
Flood Works
The Skylight Hall and the Cabinet
10th of August – 10th of September 2023

Kunstnerforbundet is pleased to present Tore Magne Gundersen's exhibition Flood Works in The Skylight Hall and the Cabinet consisting of a larger series of textile works, drawings and artist's books.

In the Skylight Hall, textile applications fill three of the exhibition room's four walls like a frieze hanging over a sea of large and small textiles that cover large parts of the hall's marble floor. Together, the works on the floor and walls make up a larger whole under the title Flood Works, which also gives the exhibition its name.

As so often with the frieze in an art historical context, Gundersen's exhibition also deals with life in different phases. Each of the works in the exhibition has an inherent nar­rative, where figurative elements almost naive in their idiom repre­sent events and situations, often with reference to the artist's own expe­riences. In the exhibition, the flood structure can stand as a visual con­struc­tion that dams up a real and a mental flood, a chaos.

With clear references to the Symbolists, Gundersen makes use of simple, but emo­tion­ally satu­rated symbols and visual tools, where sponta­neous whims including fetus-like beings, without the works appearing pre­ten­tious. This is made clear in the exhi­bition's second part in the Cabinet. Two walls filled with drawings, as well as a series of self-produced artist books that alternate between drawing and text, go further into the underlying matter, the motivation for Gundersen's Flood Works.

Tore Magne Gundersen (b. 1957 in Froland) is a visual artist who lives and works in Oslo. Gundersen's artistic practice includes textiles, drawing, painting, animation, sculpture and intaglio printing. He has an education from the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry and the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. In recent years, Gundersen has, among other places, exhibited at Kolbotn Garasje Galleri, Bomulds­fab­riken Kunsthall, Oppland Kunst­senter, Agder Kunst­senter and Studio Blikket in Steinkjer. He has also parti­cipated in group exhibitions such as the The autumn exhibition (Høst­utstillingen), Contextile 2022, Guimarães, Portugal, as well as at Galleri Tid in Mandal, AD_VENT in Oslo and Bastard Art Book Fair in Lille­hammer. His works have been acquired by Kunstsilo, KODE, Bomulds­fabriken Kunsthall, Kulturrådet, Asker munici­pality's art collection and The National Museum.