Exhibition Opening: Thorbjørn Sørensen

Name: Exhibition Opening: Thorbjørn Sørensen
Start: 2025-11-13T18:00:00+01:00
End: 2025-11-13T20:00:00+01:00
Location: Haxthausen Gate 3, 0263 Oslo, Norway

Schedule

Thu Nov 13 2025 at 06:00 pm to 08:00 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

Haxthausen Gate 3, 0263 Oslo, Norway | Oslo, OS

OSL contemporary is proud to present a new exhibition by Thorbjørn Sørensen Thursday 13 November, 17.00-20.00.
Exhibition text by Chris Bayley:
There was a palpable sense of frustration when Thorbjørn Sørensen and I met via video on a Monday afternoon. “I hate painting”, he laughed as he haphazardly attempted to direct his camera towards the paintings propped up against the wall that he’d been working on. He explained that the brand of oil paints he is using for the first time “just won’t dry.” It certainly felt like a case of the ‘Monday blues’—that jolted feeling of starting the working week and recalibrating the body and its routine. Nevertheless, it was evident that this feeling of frustration stemming from the act and labour of painting fuels Sørensen’s desire to consistently explore and expand his understanding of it—an art form he has exclusively committed himself to for over three decades. Defying easy categorisation, Sørensen’s extraordinary oeuvre conjures numerous art historical references. Flitting between realism, figuration and abstraction, he is deeply occupied with observing the mundanities of everyday life, nature and the objects that surround us.
For his second exhibition at OSL contemporary, Sørensen presents a continuation of the series titled 'A Warm Afternoon' that were presented at the gallery in 2023. In these earlier works that drew inspiration from the dramatic panoramic tableau vivant’s depicting battle scenes from the 1800s, the artist developed a distinct visual language that captured his observations of people dwelling in Tjuvholmen, a new urban park located outside the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo. Unlike the dense mass of interlocking bodies clad in bathing suits that fail to be contained within the confines of the canvas, Sørensen’s new paintings mark a departure from the soft colour palette and loose washes of thinned pigment of his earlier series to much deeper, muted abstract compositions. Seemingly sharing the formal aesthetics of eighteenth-century Romanticism and colour-field painting from the late 1950s, these paintings retain a radical simplicity and dreamlike allure that embrace a painterly quality.
Figures emerge from lurid green canvases coupled with gestural black lines or soft painterly marks that demarcate the luscious grass, tree canopies, the horizon, the sea or the sky. Some feel cartoony, while others recall the dynamic painted skies of J.M.W Turner. Taken together, Sørensen said that the dramatic panoramic tableau vivant’s depicting battle scenes from the 1800s have been a major source of inspiration for these works. “These aren’t necessarily figurative” Sørensen explains, “but are compositions made up with bodies.” Rather than attempting to capture the likeness or identity of the individuals depicted, Sørensen focuses on the atmosphere of a place through an investigation of form, line and brushwork resulting in unexpected configurations.
In these brooding landscapes, often contained within floating and irregular rectangular shapes of colour, Sørensen zooms out from the bodies that occupy these sites of public recreation and instead attempts to capture the essence of the park. Whilst these paintings are focused on a specific park in Oslo—one that the artist passes often—there are no identifiable buildings or motifs that root them in a specific place, time or context. Marked by a depth of green (or in some instances golden yellow that are suggestive of sun-scorched lawns) and accents of blue, brown and white, there is a certain rhythm found within the series as he begins to negotiate between nature and the urban landscape that surrounds it. A collision of vigorous washes of paint, or textured fields of white in the foreground of 'Lurid Green I' and 'Lurid Green II', begin to define the environment that the figures inhabit.
Peppered throughout, they are seen huddled together in groups or alone—heightened further by the sparsity of the compositions. A tension is formed and the scenes almost become voyeuristic. Nearly all of them have their backs facing us, forcing the viewer into the scene to observe their behaviour or their perspective. Others have an avoidant gaze: they look out to the distance, converse, scroll on their phone, sunbathe, recline and rest. They’re not overly fussy or stylised, no distinguishing features. In some instances, their limbs faintly appear through simple swoops of the brushpaint, almost dissolving into the park itself.
Unlike Sørensen’s busier series 'A Warm Afternoon', these paintings possess a sense of quietness, stillness and contemplation. Teetering on the edge of the surreal, they envision visualise liminal spaces that are at once familiar and psychological. Described by the artist as “a miniature theatre of life” the park becomes a space to be “seen and observed. A small world within the larger world, sheltered from crises beyond its borders, yet not without its own unease.”
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Chris Bayley is a curator based in London, UK. He is currently Exhibitions Curator at Serpentine where he has worked on exhibitions and accompanying publications including the Serpentine Pavilion 2025 'A Capsule in Time' by Marina Tabassum (2025); 'Lauren Halsey: emajendat' (2024); 'Judy Chicago: Revelations' (2024) (and subsequent tour to Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Germany); 'Tomás Saraceno: Web(s) of Life' (2023); and 'Barbara Chase-Riboud: Infinite Folds' (2022). Previously he was Assistant Curator at Barbican, where he worked on 'Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics' (September 2022); 'Shilpa Gupta: Sun at Night' (2021); 'Claudia Andujar: The Yanomami Struggle' (2021); 'Masculinities: Liberation through Photography' (2020); 'Yto Barrada: Agadir' (2018); and 'Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-Garde' (2018), authoring and editing publications for many of these projects. Between 2014 and 2024, he was Associate Curator at VITRINE, London, working on exhibitions with artists such as Leah Clements and Kate Cooper, among many others. His writing has been published in numerous books, articles and magazines, most recently 'Vitamin V: Video and the Moving Image in Contemporary Art' (Phaidon: 2025).
Thorbjørn Sørensen lives and works in Oslo and is educated at the National Craft and Art School (1982– 1986) and the Academy of Fine Art, Oslo (1987-1991). Sørensen works in the tension between naturalistic watercolors and figurative works over to fully abstract paintings. From his studies to the present day, the search for painterly possibilities has been an ongoing motivation. Motives are often inspired by day-to-day life and overlooked daily scenes in nature and objects around us. The works are distinctly relaxed and playful but do at the same time contain both strong and subtle references to the history of painting. Previous solo exhibitions includes 'A Warm Afternoon' OSL contemporary, Oslo (2022); Dropsfabrikken, Trondheim (2020) Kunstnerforbundet (2009). He has participated in a number of group exhibitions, such as; Tegnerforbundet (2024); Kabuso kunsthus, Øystese (2021); Stenersenmuseet, Oslo (2014), Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden (2007); Carnegie Art Award (2007-08); Lillehammer Kunstmuseum (2000); Trondheim Kunstmuseum (2000); Bergen Kunstmuseum (2000); Museum of Contemporary Art, Vilnius (1994). He is represented in amongst others the collections of The British Museum, London; The National Museum, Oslo; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; KODE Art Museum, Bergen; Nordea Art Collection; Public Art Agency Sweden, Stockholm; and The Arts Council Norway.