Trude Viken Norwegian, b. 1969
“I twist and knead the oil paint in thick layers. It is processed until the shapes dissolve and the images meet my intentions and requirements. I am a colorist, and I work intuitively. Almost everything is allowed. The layers of oil paint can be very many before I am fully content.”
Trude Viken is a ‘colorist’ without restrictions. Her paintings are saturated with swirls of fleshtones, ashy greys and witchy greens coupled with bright red, orange, yellow, and luminous pinks. The smell of oil paint lingers on and tones, both earthy and unnatural, elicit both eroticism and repulsion. Viken’s work requires an audience for its physicality, a terrain of oil paint. In this way, they are landscapes of weather as unpredictable as mood. A face becomes a hairy green mass with bubble gum pink base, white strokes like the edges of clouds or wings. Her portraits from everyday life develop into fantasies expressing our interior lives and our most palpable feelings, they seduce through their psychological penetration. With Viken’s hand, layers of oil paint become whirling eyes, nose, mouth, ecstatic grimaces or smirks, finished when she decides so. Rows of twisted, kneaded faces hung together like a ghoulish family album of passing moods and impulse. The final marks different from the original swaths. Shapes are dissolved as the layers of paint can be repainted many times; almost anything is allowed. Viken's first solo exhibition in New York was at Fortnight Institute, New York in 2018.
Trude Viken (1969) b. Lødingen, Norway
2022
OTP - Copenhagen, Denmark (Solo show)
Independent Art Fair - Fortnight Institute, New York City, USA (Solo show)
Midnight Activities - Belenius Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden (Solo show)
Person(a) - Venus Over Manhattan, New York City, USA
Åpningsutstillingen - The National Museum, Oslo, Norway
Lost in a Spectacle - Woah Gallery, Hong Kong, China
Art Brussels 2022 - Booth E.16, Presented by Everyday Gallery, Belgium
2021
Midnight Theater - Fortnight Institute, New York City, USA (Solo show)
Night Eyes - Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Norway (Solo show)
The Tendon Blanket Goes Down at Nightfall - Buer Gallery, Oslo, Norway (Solo show)
I Have My Eye On You - Everyday Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
Hunters in the Snow - 303 Gallery, New York City, USA
2020
Constellations - Buer Gallery, Oslo, Norway
Østlandsutstillingen - Kunstbanken Hedmark Kunstsenter, Buskerud Kunstsenter & Østfold Kunstsenter, Fredrikstad, Norway
Ryszard Warsinski + Trude Viken - Bærum Kunsthall, Oslo, Norway
Lit Naits, Mexico (Oh, Brother) - QB Gallery, Oslo, Norway
2019
Unmasked - M + B, Los Angeles, USA (Solo show)
Velvet Ropes - Gallery Golsa, Oslo, Norway
2018
Faces and Traces, Fortnight Institute, New York City, USA (Solo show)
Bærum Kunsthall, Fornebu, Norway
Sommerutstillingen - Galleri Fineart, Oslo, Norway
2017
Østlandsutstillingen: 500 years of the Reformation, Oslo and Kiel - Germany
2016
Maskefall - Galleri Albin Upp, Oslo, Norway (Solo show)
Borders and Boundaries, Bærum Kunsthall, Fornebu, Norway
Åpen dør, Kommunegården, Bærum BKIB - Bildende Kunstnere i Bærum Galleri Ramfjord, Oslo, Norway
2015
Debutantveggen - Galleri Ramfjord, Oslo, Norway (Solo show)
In Between, Bærum Kunsthall, Fornebu, Norway
Romeriksutstillingen - Ullensaker Kunstforening, Jessheim, Norway
Romeriksutstillingen - Lørenskog Kunstforening, Lørenskog, Norway
Galleri Ramfjord, Oslo, Norway
2014
Group expo with Eva Galligani & Eline Huitfelt - SUM Rådhusgalleriet, Oslo, Norway
2013
Galleri Albin Upp, Oslo, Norway
2012
Graduation exhibition – Rådhusgalleriet, DTK/Det Tverrfagelige Kunstinstitutt, Oslo, Norway
Education
2012-2015
Studied with the painter Markus Brendmoe, Oslo, Norway
2009-2012
Det tverrfaglige kunstinstitutt (DTK), Bærum, Norway