Nikolai Torgersen
Nikolai Torgersen is a Norwegian artist based in Oslo. He works in various media such as painting, drawing, sculpture and installation.
Torgersen's work is rooted in an expressive, figurative tradition on the one hand, and a romantic tradition on the other. Torgersen mixes figures and motifs with high and low levels of detail in his work. In his paintings and drawings, for example, we see simplified figures in interaction with motifs with high levels of detail. Perhaps to break up the world and show that what we see is only a simplified, subjective version. A glimpse of everything that exists, which reminds us that we can never grasp everything, much less what other people see or experience. His works deal with how we see the world filtered through our own personal experiences.
He is known for his autobiographical, confessional work. His personal voice and story play a fundamental role in his artistry. Trauma, social conditions, substance abuse as well as personal choices and responsibilities are often central to the works.
We could also say that Torgersen is a contemporary echo of the Romantic period of art, where the essence, conditions and origins of man are problematized, precisely by setting up culture and nature as opposites. What drives us, keeps us up, breaks us down? What is choice (culture) and what is drive (nature)? Man's insignificance and insignificance in the encounter with the great creation (read society), also lies like a vibrating string in Torgersen's art.
In some of his installations, he has recreated environments from his lowest points in life and builds on a tradition for young British artists of showing the most intimate and personal., for example Tracy Emin's Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1995) and My Bed (1998). With this, he has managed to establish a personal connection with his audience.
