Exhibition opening Thursday 8 October, 17–20.00

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OCTOBER

In Norwegian, høst means both autumn and harvest. In English, fall is at once a season and a descent. Between the two words lies the temper of this exhibition, both an abundance of colour and gathered energy, and beneath it, a persistent unease.

OSL contemporary is proud to present a group exhibition with Thorbjørn Sørensen, Astrid Nondal and Kim Andreas Roland Berger. The three differ in style, technique, and generation, yet they share an intensity and a sustained interest in what painting can still be. They all intimately work with the history of the medium, and each of them lets something unsettled run beneath an alluring first impression.

Thorbjørn Sørensen's two new oil paintings noticeably depart from Lurid Green Canvases, his 2025 exhibition at OSL contemporary. In the first, we see the legs of people walking casually through rainbow-like hues, while the lower register holds the familiar green, now overlaid with black strokes. In the second, figures sit with their backs turned, in poses Sørensen might have “collected” from old masters’ paintings or seen himself outdoors in Oslo. Below them, black occupies almost half the composition, broken only by a strip of white and icy blue at the base. Sørensen never lets gravity settle for long. Humour slips in as if to relieve the painting of its own seriousness. A fleeting, translucent and slightly spiritual dove passes through the walking feet, and among the sitting figures, a melancholic dog with a bone (or maybe a cigar?) in its mouth looks straight out of the picture.

Astrid Nondal's landscapes are chromatic studies, that belong to no particular place. In recent years she has worked mainly in egg-oil tempera, a technique she adopted after working with fresco. She mixes dry pigments into an emulsion of egg, linseed oil and water, which creates a matt surface without reflections, becoming lighter and drier than oil. Through this method, she builds surfaces with a pronounced radiance and physical presence.

The human figure, if present at all, is reduced to a detail. Nondal grew up in Tyssedal where an overwhelming landscape that once drew travellers and Romantics was later claimed by hydropower and industry. That double inheritance runs through her work. For centuries, nature was what our culture set out to conquer. Now the loss of nature has become the greater threat. Nondal has described her aim as a poetic mood that conveys closeness to the living world, the love for it and concern on its behalf. In her paintings, beauty gives way, almost imperceptibly, to disquiet. In an era of accelerating ecological loss, that strain carries a weight it might not have held a generation ago.

Kim Andreas Roland Berger, the youngest of the three, shows a comparatively more restrained body of work than usual, in a near-monochrome register. By purposefully narrowing his range, he heightens the stillness that runs through his practice. Each painting begins with a drawing with observations from everyday life and from art history, assembled into fragmented landscapes and rooms. He primes linen canvases with layers of ground marble, exposing the colour of the linen beneath. Thin washes of acrylic and raw pigment sink into the surface to draw out its texture, before strokes of oil define the figurative elements.

His interiors appear calm, yet pressure seems to build from outside, as though the balance of each picture were held in place through inherent struggle. Antonio Cataldo has described this as "an internal, controlled catastrophe". In this Berger belongs to the Nordic lineage of painters engaged with domestic interiors, where stillness never quite registers as tranquillity. The stacked canvases within the compositions give a nod to predecessors in abst

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Astrid Nondal (b. 1958) lives and works in Oslo. She trained at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo from 1985 to 1991. Her debut solo exhibition was at UKS in 1990, and she has since shown regularly with Galleri Haaken in Oslo, most recently in Pneuma (2024). Other solo presentations include Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Kunstnerforbundet and, in 2025, Bodøgaard kunst og kultur. Her work has been included in Surrealism in Norwegian Art 1930–2010 at the Stenersen Museum, The Mountain in Norwegian Art at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, the Carnegie Art Award 2005 touring exhibition and the Beijing International Art Biennale. She has presented several large public commissions, including mosaic work in collaboration with Ebba Bring for the Norwegian Parliament. Her paintings are held by the National Museum, Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, KORO, Arts Council Norway and the Storting, among others.

Thorbjørn Sørensen (b. 1961) lives and works in Oslo and is educated at the National Craft and Art School (1982– 1986) and the Academy of Fine Art, Oslo (1987-1991). Few Norwegian painters move as freely across the full range of painting as Sørensen. Over more than three decades he has made photorealistic paintings, precise watercolours of birds, and abstract stripe works. What ties it together is not a signature style but a sustained curiosity in painting. His subjects are usually close at hand in overlooked moments from everyday life. His works are distinctly relaxed and playful but do at the same time contain strong and subtle references to the history of painting. He has held solo exhibitions at Galleri K, Kunstnerforbundet and at OSL Contemporary with A Warm Afternoon (2022) and Lurid Green Canvases (2025). Group exhibitions include the Carnegie Art Award, Concrete: Non-figurative Art in Norway 1920–2000, Zachęta in Warsaw and, in 2026, Nordic Noir at the British Museum. His work is held by the National Museum, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Arts Council Norway and the Swedish Public Art Agency, among others.

Kim Andreas Roland Berger (b. 1993, Oslo) received his BFA at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2020–23) with an exchange at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest. He completed his MFA in 2025, and presented as part of the degree show Hold at Kunstnernes Hus. In 2026, Berger was awarded the Fredrik Roos Art Grant, which is given annually to a young Nordic artist working primarily in painting or sculpture. In connection with the award, Artipelag presented his grant exhibition, Accumulated Stacks.