Morten Juvet in the Nøstetangen room

In this project, which is curated by the museum's director, visual artists, craftsmen, photographers, video artists, concept artists, installation artists, choreographers, designers and architects are invited to exhibit in Drammens Museum's permanent exhibition of Nøstetange glass, baroque silver, faience, tin and painted wallpaper. of the 18th century. The project's main theme is to play today's finest artistic expression against outstanding art industry and crafts from the second half of the 18th century. This series has proven to be very popular and it has received rave reviews from leading art critics. The first artist out was the ceramicist Marit Tingleff, who started it all in 2002. Only the very best performers of the various media are invited and besides works by Norwegian artists, the Drammen audience has met works by Swiss, English, German, Norwegian-American and American artists in the Solo project.

There is a lot of talk about things changing, both visually and meaningfully, depending on the context in which we encounter the object. And that is true. Something always happens to things when they are moved or pushed on. And something especially happens when art objects are exhibited in such a beautiful room as the Nøstetangen room at Drammens Museum. To clarify what is meant by context meaning a lot, and to avoid that this becomes just a jargon, something that is said in general and without giving examples, we will with this project show exactly what happens to the experience of certain works of art in the most diverse materials and visual design in this particular room.

Morten Juvet's new paintings have a simple and emblematic shape. He uses a solid background and the main shape is formed by a circular organization of oak leaves that form a wreath, and curved banners with inscriptions. He uses both text and image elements. The starting point is record covers, and he plays on the duality of the English word "cover", which means "cover", and which is used both about the cardboard cover the old LP pallets were in and about making a new version of a famous record, a cover version that builds on and "covers" the underlying song. The lyrics are based on artist names and record titles and lines in the lyrics. In a typical Juvetic way, it is a subtle, almost magical detachment in a combination of themes, where the fly agaric and the rabbit play the main roles. There is a lot of humor in this lucrative game of words, pictures and associations.    

In the Nøstetangen room, 10 paintings with either light blue or light blue-green background color have been selected. This is done to create a visual connection in the dark, evocative space. The paintings of the gorge stand bright and fresh from the gray walls. But the most important thing here is to show that a new pictorial art project that has its inspiration Anglo-American and Norwegian popular culture from the last 50 years, has clear lines of connection back to the Baroque and Rococo visual languages. As Morten Juvet does now, with everything from record covers, flags and cigarette packs' design language, 18th century form creators used a similar method, whether it was glass, silver, wallpaper or faience in the city (or rose painting in the village). Like Morten Juvet, they made simple decorative frames, they selected some objects that they put as a vignette, a flower arrangement or a small figure scene inside the table, and sometimes they painted or engraved a text on it.

These texts, names or monograms, which in the Baroque and Rococo could also function as labels, headings, words of wisdom or mottos, seem like a call to get the audience's attention. This is art - both old and new - that appeals to us, shows itself and wants to get us talking. So, read and see, let yourself be amazed and entertained, and compare old and new.

For the exhibition - which starts in the new Exhibition Room on the ground floor of the museum building - there is a richly illustrated book with a more comprehensive text by Åsmund Thorkildsen.

Åsmund Thorkildsen, museum director