Book cover

Magne’s new art book Imprints will be published here in Norway tomorrow, October 4th. The publisher Forlaget Press has posted a picture of him holding the book on Facebook.

The 368-page lavishly illustrated coffee table book documents the process of creating the “Imprints” sculpture park at Fornebuporten and includes around 60 of the poems that formed the basis of the text fragments punched into the various sculptures, presented here in their original form for the first time. The book is priced at 799 kr (£75).

Some info from the publisher:

“Oslo’s Fornebuporten business and residential district boasts its own sculpture park, Imprints, featuring ceramic works by the Norwegian artist and musician Magne Furuholmen.

Furuholmen has created totemic sculptures of glazed and unglazed ceramic on an incredible scale – the largest is taller than 19 feet high – and arranged them around the site, placing some in freestanding positions and installing some in granite pools. Playing with and against the sleek modern architecture of the surrounding Fornebuporten complex, the artist chose self-consciously archaic forms (like amphorae, columns and sarcophagi) and traditional materials and techniques in developing “Imprints.” The sculptures are covered with words, letters and shapes punched or pushed directly into the material surfaces. Imprints documents this amazing project.”

Next Thursday, 12 October, there will be a Norwegian launch of Magne’s collection of limited edition carpets for Urban Fabric Rugs at Expo Nova in Oslo, where he’ll also present the new Imprints book.

The book will probably also be available at his upcoming sales exhibition Literary Constructs at Nes Kulturhus in Årnes later this month, from 21 October – 28 October.

Magne at Tommerup Ceramic Workshop, hammering letters into one of his massive jars
(Picture from Aftenposten.no)

Aftenposten’s weekend magazine A-magasinet has a 15-page article about Magne’s most ambitious art project to date; he is in the midst of creating the largest ceramic sculpture park in Scandinavia. A-magasinet has followed Magne’s process of making the sculptures, which is being done at Tommerup Ceramic Workshop in Denmark.

Magne has also made the magazine cover, out of clay. A video clip of him working on the cover can be seen here. Another video featuring Magne’s art has been posted here. And a full English translation of the article is available at Aftenposten.no.

The park is another commission by Kjell Inge Røkke’s company Aker, for which Magne has previously done a number of projects, including decorating the enormous sail of Røkke’s yacht Aglaia and a unique steel sculpture to be placed outside Røkke’s cabin.

The sculpture park will be situated outside the new Aker headquarters at Fornebu near Oslo and has been given the name Imprints. It will be comprised of 40 ceramic elements, including the two largest jars in the world (6 meters tall), nine columns (2 – 4 meters tall) and a 12 meter long ceramic relief.

“This is the single most comprehensive commission in my artistic career. That is why this new park is extremely important to me as a visual artist. I was never in doubt whether I should accept the challenge”, Magne says.

“The park will be marked by things I wrote through the years, texts with a lyrical element. Some of them come from songs I wrote, but most is free standing English poetry. I have something like 5000 – 6000 unpublished poems. They have been stowed away, awaiting some project.”

Many of the poems will eventually end up in a book in connection with the park, to be published later.

In addition to working on the sculpture park, Magne will hold a summer exhibition in Sandefjord from 28 June to 16 August. Sometime in the fall he’ll be exhibiting in Washington, and in December he’ll take part in a group exhibition in Rio.

“I know where I shall be every single day until June 2016, but I never get tired from working hard. What tires me, is the waste of time and people who get obsessed with details”, he says.

The first section of the Imprints park is set to open in August 2015, while the whole park won’t be completed until next summer.