Crime on Canvas
Geir Yttervik
10. juni kl.14
This summer, Kristiansand Kunsthall proudly presents a comprehensive exhibition of Geir Yttervik’s paintings. The exhibition is titled Crime on Canvas and shows the artist’s extensive artistry including both older and newer works.

Many of the motives in Yttervik’s paintings recreate apparently trivial situations. Normal people are featured in ordinary places, and the pictures are framed in such a way that we who look at it are inside the picture. But while the pictures appear to be random snapshots, the mood is compressed. It is unclear what actually happens in the pictures, reality crincles and one can detect an underlying uneasiness. Other paintings are more reportage-like. In those motives it is clear that something has happened, an accident or something tragic, but here as well we only get an inexplicable piece of the event. The persons in the pictures are facing away and passive, they seldomly interact with either each other or the situation. Yttervik stages picture narratives with effects that trigger empathy, but as spectators we are often awkwardly standing in front of the canvas without understanding what’s happening, we only feel it.
The paintings are built as collages with elements from both pop culture, the daily news and art history. Yttervik picks characters or scenes from news items, films or literature and combines them with his own photos. He describes his method as personal processing. Yttervik’s artistry is shaped by the loss of his brother who died in a car accident as a teenager and the tragic consequences this had for his family and himself as a young adult. He consciously works on processing trauma via his material and says that the terror of the past still drives him.
Crime on Canvas also includes many of Yttervik’s new works. We glimpse a development of his personal processing where people interact more, and we can glimpse care and maybe hope.
Geir Yttervik has taught several generations of artists at Einar Granum arts school. He emphasizes process and craftship in his work. With a strong hold in traditional painting his pictures are first and foremost colour and form, thereafter figures and narrative. He builds up the figures in his works from abstract fields of colour and coats of paint. Yttervik is often called a painter’s painter.
Geir Yttervik, born in 1955, lives and works in Lunner. He studied at Statens Håndtverk- og kunstindustriskole (department of graphic design) 1975-78 and Statens Kunstakademi (department of painting) 1978 – 1982 and 1985. Yttervik has had solo exhibitions at Säffle Kunstforening in Sweden (2020), Tingvoll kunstforening (2019), Open studio Cité International des Arts in Paris (2018) and Kunstnerforbundet (2012), among others. He has also participated in various group exhibitions in Norway and abroad, among others Galleri Semmingsen (2019), Surnadal billag (2019), Festspela i Heidal (2018), Nils Aas Kunst-verksted (2016) and Hå gamle prestegård (2015) and has also been part of Høstutstilllingen for several years. Yttervik has also done commissions for Veitvet metro station (2017) and Hommelvik kulturhus (2016). He did the scenography for the drama Om våren (In Spring) at Rogaland teater (2018). He is represented in the collections of The National Museum, Norwegian Arts Council, Astrup Fearnley, Statoil kunstsamlinger, Norges bank and Sørlandets kunstmuseum.
The exhibition is curated by author Hans Petter Blad and Cecilie Nissen.
Hans Petter Blad has written an exhibition essay, Forbrytelsen I maleriet: Om Geir Ytterviks bilder which will be published as a catalogue in the exhibition period. The text can be read already now in Kristiansand Kunsthall (Norwegian only).