ISCA GALLERY

Liv Ertzeid
THE LATE SHOW
25.05 - 24.06.23

We are delighted to present Liv Ertzeid’s second solo exhibition at the gallery titled The Late Show. This exhibition brings together a new series of large scale paintings punctuated by several smaller works, and a series of wooden sculptures which populate the space only in the hours after the gallery has closed. 

In a world rich in botanical symbolism and natural imagery, Ertzeid plays with the shifting hours of the day and its effects on the scenes she captures. From the freshness of the brisk morning light, the lush and bountiful afternoons bursting with movement and life, to the quiet twilight hours of the night. Each painting reads like a paragraph of a book in which the narrative has no particular order or form other than its palpable descriptions and visualizations of the scenes they inhabit.

The haunting stillness of nighttime is felt in Almost like dry yeast (2023) in which stems covered in sharp menacing thorns shoot up against a dark shadowy background. Small round buds with bursting pink petals peak out the top of the stems, while the flat planes of darkness and night behind convey a false sense of placid calmness. In stark contrast lies Late afternoon (2022) a painting that is so full and bursting with life it appears as it is vibrating with color and movement. Blossoms, petals, leaves and stems boldly proliferate across and seemingly beyond the entire canvas. It’s as if nature itself is blooming right in front of one’s eyes, sprouting from the soil in a confluence of colors and forms, ascending up the canvas and up to the sky.

Ertzeid’s creative amplifications and distortions are significant in her work, tantalizingly toying with notions of perspective, proportion and depth. Linear and planar forms create solid planes and fields of contrasting color. Each work plays with varying degrees of magnification and abstraction, in some cases reducing the imagery to patterns of color swirling over the canvas and inviting the viewer into its depths. In Plants make noises when stressed (2023), the varying shades of a green background takes over the entire field of vision, bleeding out at the edges to become simply gradations pure color. The result is an all-over, almost pattered effect, which skirts between representation and abstraction. 

Four wooden assemblage-style sculptures titled ‘The midnight crew’ are included in the exhibition but only appear in the gallery space at night time. They take their absence during the gallery’s visiting hours so they are never experienced in conjunction with the paintings, only as the night crew tasked to caring for and safeguarding the works at nighttime. These sculptures act as playful extensions of Ertzeid’s paintings, each adorned with distinct little personalities and quirky attributes, taking on a more figurative form that is rarely seen in her two dimensional works. 

Liv Ertzeid (b.1986, Lørenskog, Norway) holds a BA (2015) and MA (2019) from the Oslo Academy of Fine Art. Her work has recently been acquired for the collection of the National Museum of Norway the Christian Sveaas Kunststiftelse, and Stortingets Kunstsamling (the art collection of the Norwegian parliament). Recent solo exhibitions include FLWOERS, Galleri Opdhal, Stavanger; The Ba Ba Bug Show, Stormen, Bodø; Look down, fair moon, and bathe this scene, ISCA Gallery, Oslo; The 2019 Garden Exhibition, Destiny’s Atelier, Oslo; Zoo, Plum Trim, Nesodden. Selected group exhibitions include Styrerommet, Henie Onstad, Bærum, Herfra, Galleri Opdahl, Stavanger; Unge inviterte, LNM, Oslo; Gathering, Hypha, Nesodden; Olje og Begjær, Blomquist / QB Galleri, Oslo; En springer på randen er en springer i sanden, Saksumdal Tempel, Oslo; Vet du ikke det? Jeg trodde du var en velutdannet kvinne, Bærum Kunsthall, Fornebu; En psykogeografisk guide til Oslo/Tegnebiennalen, Oslo; Urd og Liv med venner, One Night Only, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; I Am My World, Podium, Oslo. Liv Ertzeid currently lives and works in Frederikstad, Norway.