Picture from VG

Magne explains the cancellation of his “Futura Plus” exhibition in today’s VG.

Here are some quotes from the interview:

“I sat there completely numb and glued to the TV screen for a week, inhaling the news about the unbelieveable tragedy at Utøya island and the government quarter. As I gradually started to think ahead, it became clear that it wouldn’t be appropriate to hold my opening exhibition.”

“Drawing from experiences which include my own hospitalizations, I have during this last year been creating works for an exhibition thematically linked to human frailty in general, and hospital settings specifically, with everything that entails of drama, suffering and helplessness. I don’t want to make an exhibition which could be potentially upsetting in this situation.”

For “Futura Plus”, Magne had once again been collecting used bed sheets from various hospitals, to use as canvases.

“I’m not sure if this exhibition will ever be shown. We’ll see.”

“It is ironic that I’m opening my own gallery by cancelling my own exhibition. But that’s the right thing to do now. The paintings have been important for me to create, but it’s not important to show them now.”

Magne has created the new gallery Stolper + Friends together with his UK gallerist Paul Stolper and the Norwegian gallerist Hugo Opdal, who lives at Flø.

“I haven’t really harboured any ambitions to start my own gallery, but I have already been working with Stolper and Opdal for years, and when my previous gallery Trafo closed down last year the idea evolved naturally.”

The gallery’s opening exhibition will now be “The Souls” by Damien Hirst instead.

“The original plan was to show new works by Damien Hirst closer to Christmas, but now we had to do a quick turnaround, and it’s very fitting to show the beautiful butterfly-series “The Souls”, made in collaboration with Paul Stolper, where the butterfly symbolises, among other things, the journey and rebirth of the soul. It’s a much more appropriate association right now”, Magne says.