This exhibition of his photographs, prints, and films emphasizes the artist’s experimentalism, examining his exploration of the camera as an expressive medium. By probing and exploiting the dynamics of “faulty” practice, such as distortion, blurred motion, eccentric camera angles, and other photographic “mistakes,” Munch photographed himself and his immediate environment in ways that rendered them poetic. In both still images and in his few forays with a hand-held moving-picture camera, Munch not only archived images, but invented them.
On loan from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, the 46 copy prints in the exhibition and the continuous screening of the DVD containing Munch’s films are accompanied by a small selection of prints from private collections, as well as contextualizing panels and others that examine Munch’s photographic exploration. Similar to the ways in which the artist invented techniques and approaches to painting and graphic art, Munch’s informal photography both honored the material before his lens and transmuted it into uncommon motifs.
You can view a virtual The Experimental Self exhibition here: https://the-experimental-self.munchmuseet.no/.
This exhibition has been organized by the American-Scandinavian Foundation/Scandinavia House in partnership with the Munch Museum, Oslo. It was originally presented at Scandinavia House: The Nordic Center in American, New York, NY, from November 21, 2017 to April 7, 2018
In memory of Eldon Nysether
