Opening Thursday 5 November, 18.00-20.00

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Ane Mette Hol and Fredrik Værslev is a double exhibition taking place at Allé Allé and OSL contemporary simultaneously, connecting for the first time in duo form the work of two of the most consistently relentless Norwegian artists of the last two decades. Hol and Værslev graduated and entered the art world around the same time and have exhibited widely across many of the same institutions, and their work is to be found in many of the same institutional and private collections. Furthermore, the artists have followed each other’s careers with mutual admiration over the last decade, occasionally as part of the same exhibitions. Ane Mette Hol and Fredrik Værslev are two artists whose work deals with the conceptual and material minutiae found in the legacy modernism has left on contemporary art. Both artists tend to begin with an observation of form. Their works spring from similarities in logic and process more than visual or material likeness. Both artists deal with questions relating to visibility, technique (noticeable and not), and often play on an unclear distinction between abstraction and hyper-figuration. Hol tends to zoom in on the most detailed elements of an object to “re-create” her motif of choice as a kind of 1:1 (often indistinguishable from “the real thing”), whereas Værslev zooms in and then blows up the zoom, usually onto a large canvas-shaped re-enactment of sorts.

Some early works by Hol took the form of drawn copies of xeroxed pieces of paper found around the common areas of the art academy, while Værslev’s Garden Paintings are based on the sunscreens at his childhood home in Drøbak. His terrazzo and canopy paintings represent Værslev’s long-standing interest in architecture and the complex relationships between artworks, the spatial realities of exhibition venues, and the symbolic value creation that results from this relationship. As such, his work is deeply rooted in the history of institutional critique.

This is equally true of Ane Mette Hol’s work, perhaps even more so in the direct references throughout her practice to the ready-made and its Duchampian origins. Her works, however, are expertly crafted and decidedly “unready-mades.” In one of her latest series, she has made drawings based on screenshots from her own website, portraying both older works and installation images. She’s not reinterpreting her previous work; she’s simply repurposing it as material. Both Hol and Værslev choose the formal starting points of their work from domestic environments and the immediate surroundings in which the works will be presented and distributed, such as an exhibition space’s architecture or the trivial objects found in and around it, yet always making use of almost illusionistic technique and skill. Their work privileges “lower” types of visual material, raising it to the level of signification, and they do so by making use of traces of labor, or non-labor: smudges, lines that appear and disappear, shapes and patterns that seemingly float along throughout the work. We see this both in the almost invisibly manipulated surface of Ane Mette Hol’s After the Dust Settles and the broad, but minimal brushstrokes of the Garden Painting by Fredrik Værslev which the exhibition brings together. In both cases, these elements weave form-based and conceptual narratives. In this sense, they both engage in a type of flattening of hierarchies of form. Hol and Værslev are adept at making their marks and hiding their tracks at the same time.

– Text by Erlend Hammer

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Ane Mette Hol (b. 1979, Bodø, Norway) lives and works in Oslo. Educated at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. Hol works conceptually with drawing and investigates the relationship between the original and the reproduction. Upon first encounter, Hol’s work appears as readymades, seemingly indistinguishable from industrially produced objects. Hol, however, creates two- and three-dimensional drawings that meticulously reproduce the texture, material and tactility of objects. She invites the viewers’ focus and scrutiny, challenging one’s perception and ability to distinguish between the hand and machine-made. Selected solo exhibitions include Haugar Kunstmuseum in Tønsberg; mumok in Vienna; La Kunsthalle Mulhouse; Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst; and Trondheim kunstmuseum. Selected group exhibitions include Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo; Kunsthall Trondheim; Sørlandets kunstmuseum in Kristiansand; Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck; Kunstmuseen Krefeld; Ludwig Forum Aachen; La Centrale in Brussels; and Tallinn Art Hall. Her work is in the collections of the National Museum, Oslo; KODE, Bergen; the Kistefos Collection; Trondheim kunstmuseum; Kunstsilo, Kristiansand; Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and mumok, Vienna.

Fredrik Værslev (b. 1979, Drøbak) lives and works in Oslo and Vestfossen. He is currently a professor at the Malmö Art Academy where he finalized his MFA in 2010 including studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Værslev's recent solo exhibitions in Norway include Bergen Kunsthall (Festspillutstillingen); Astrup Fearnley Museet and STANDARD (OSLO) in Oslo; and abroad at FRAC Bretagne in Rennes, Bonner Kunstverein in Bonn; The Power Station in Dallas; Le Consortium in Dijon; Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen; Gió Marconi in Milan; Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York; Fondazione Giuliani in Rome; and at Kunsthal Aarhus. Selected international group exhibitions include Centre Pompidou in Paris; Art Sonje Centre in Seoul; Moderna Museet in Stockholm; and at Le Printemps de septembre in Toulouse; Antenna Space in Shanghai and The Modern Institute in Glasgow.

Erlend Hammer is a curator and writer based in Oslo. While curator at Haugar kunstmuseum from 2021 - 2025 his projects included Fredrik Værslev's Platting, the group exhibition Working Title: The Workers, Ane Mette Hol: Midcareer Retrospective and Charlotte Posenenske: Installation Views.