Kenneth Blom

KENNETH BLOM (f. 1967) regnes som en av Norges mest suksessrike kunstnere, med utdannelse fra Einar Granum kunstskole og Kunstakademiet i Oslo og Düsseldorf. Da Sotheby's bestemte seg for å satse på samtidskunst falt valget på Kenneth Blom, som i 2007 ble den første samtidskunstneren med separatutstilling på det prestisjefulle auksjonshuset. Siden har han stilt ut jevnlig i Europa, USA og Asia.

Kenneth Blom tilhører en generasjon kunstnere som er utdannet på Kunstakademiet i Oslo tidlig på 1990-tallet, med blant annet Bjarne Melgaard i klassen. På denne tiden var akademiet og kunstscenen i Oslo preget av konflikt mellom en figurativ og en konseptuell og postmoderne kunstretning. På den ene siden stod Nerdrum-skolen, ledet av Odd Nerdrum med krav om håndverk og de klassiske maletradisjonene. På den andre stod talsmenn for en mer teoretisk inspirert tilnærming til kunsten, der ideen og refleksjonen rundt kunstverket stod sterkt. Blom utforsket maleriet som en kombinasjon mellom disse. En viktig inspirasjon var professoren Stian Grøgaards vy om at man kunne benytte et figurativt språk uten å benytte det klassiske, figurative vokabularet.

Bloms motiver befinner seg i spenningsfeltet mellom det abstrakte og det figurative. Ensomhet og melankoli er stadig tilbakevendende temaer, «norske» temaer i så henseende. Vi ser tankefulle menneskefigurer, ofte med arkitektoniske baktepper, fargene antyder en dramatikk som ligger og lurer under overflaten.

Mange har beskrevet Bloms bilder som scenografier og tablåer som viser frosne øyeblikk, der noe har skjedd og vil komme til å skje. I kroppene og bevegelsene ligger et helt hav av følelser og samtaler vi bare kan gjette oss til. I landskapene finnes like mange historier.

Praise om Kenneth Blom

Hans Irrek, Cultural essayist. Düsseldorf: - The wonderful thing about these great paintings is that they are more than mere painting. They possess a penetrating narrative quality that is otherwise reserved for great literature. The tremendous added value in these paintings is both their aesthetic quality, but also the immediate release of emotional reactions in the viewer. Blom's paintings are not least a brilliant opus about the emblematic loss of innocence and people who remain in stasis like fallen angels. The sight of them recalls Ingeborg Bachmann's piercing statement "I am writing with my burnt hand about the nature of fire."

Nicola Kuhn, Art director/critic Der Tagespiegel. Berlin: - Kenneth Blom puts both into his pictures: the emotion and the zero point, a possible narrative and the delicacy of the pure color surfaces. In fact, it is not only the orthogonal lines and angular stacked fields that suggest coolness, but also the colors. The room is mainly kept in shades of blue, three red rectangles at the top set accents and pull it upwards. If one were to take out the figures, a completely abstract painting would result. Nothing else is reminiscent of a specific room, no door, no furniture, no domestic prop. The two actors were applied later. Blom is a masterly director who has mastered both the keyboard of abstract painting and the staging of a tense moment.

Stephen M. Cadwalader, Jason McCoy Gallery, New York: - His clear thought process; his self-reflection; his fierce determination as a painter as his environment dictates, and, the honest appraisal he gives us as he engages with the creative act of making sense and bringing purpose to the human condition.

Luisa Catucci, Luisa Catucci gallery. Berlin: - We cannot recognize in his paintings a typical geographic landscape, or a typical regional architecture, as well as it is impossible to determine much about his figures, since all ages and genders are depicted; what we can recognize is the psychological distress and the intrinsic sense of loneliness, quite often generated by the contemporary lifestyle and society. At the same time, the radicalism of Blom's pictorial language, revealed in the alternation of flat and sinuous forms, in the expressive deformation of the human body, in the specific choice of the color palette, and in the symbolic use of the environment, natural or architectonic, call to mind the work of some of the most significant Masters of modern and contemporary painting such as Edvard Munch, Edward Hopper and of course David Hockney, routing him deeply into the contemporary art historical context.

Meg Maggio, Pékin fine art. Beijing/ Hong Kong: - Not entirely a realist painter, Blom's world is one where colors create moods of uneasiness; sharp architectural angles push beyond the picture frame; figures hint at quiet anguish; and, viewers sense their participation in a voyeuristic experience. I would venture to say that these are feelings shared by all citizens of 21st century contemporary culture, particularly those of us navigating rapidly changing urban environments, where the constant displacement of people ostensibly in the name of "progress" has become the "new normal", despite the lack of consensus on what or how this "progress" will be defined.