ISCA GALLERY

Kristoffer Zeiner Christiansen
Good luck. Both spiritual and physical; all the way through
07.03 - 07.04.24

Rolf Jacobsen “Tømmer” (utdrag).

Det er godt det finnes tømmer enda i verden og velteplasser nok ennå. For det er en stor fred i tømmeret og et stort lys i det som kan skinne langt inn i kveldene om sommeren.

Det er god trøst i bråterøk og i god kvae som trenger ut i store perler dypt inn i skogene. Lukten av tømmer minner om søt valmue og korn.

Det er godt det lyser av tømmer nok på moene ennå ved Ångermanelven og Deep Creek, Columbia, som en søle efter solstrålene rundt om i verden, en sovende styrke på jorden, en hemmelig kraft som skal vare i slektledd, nesten som jern.

Det har brødets farve og kvinnekroppens og den skinnende viljen i sig som kanskje kommer av stor kjærlighet.

For tømmeret er en del av den store våren i verden. Det kommer fra kilder som ødeleggeren ennå ikke har nådd.

ISCA Gallery is pleased to present Good luck. Både åndelig og fysisk; helt igjennom (Good luck. Both spiritual and physical; all the way through), a solo exhibition by Kristoffer Zeiner Christiansen. Presenting a new series of paintings, works on paper, and glass sculptures, Zeiner Christiansen explores themes of magic and romantic realism, “good and evil”, the potentiality of nature in painting, and the narrative fiction imbued in them. 

The body of work of the Norwegian artist Kristoffer Zeiner Christiansen encompasses a wide range of techniques and material exploration. From using raw pigments to 3D-printing metals and free sculpting glass works, Zeiner Christiansen has investigated ways to intersect technique and philosophical concepts to create evocative artworks, ranging from sculpture to painting. In his recent works, he increasingly focuses on painterly practices, bordering between recognizable landscapes and abstract worlds of fantasy that incorporate many distinct and unknown influences, further exploring the notion of constructed nature. While his sculptural and performative works allowed him to draw out considerations of artificiality and playfulness materially, painting takes the artist firmly into the realms of fiction and symbolic representation on the pictorial plane. By working with paint on untreated canvas, his paintings can sometimes come across as more “molded” than painted, exploring further texture and depth. For Zeiner Christiansen, the key in dealing with these works comes from his perspective on art as something that always offers a potentiality in which something cathartic, aesthetic, or otherwise magnificent could suddenly manifest itself.

Kristoffer Zeiner Christiansen lives and works in Amsterdam, where he completed his MA at the Studio for Immediate Spaces program run by Anne Holtrop at the Sandberg Institute in 2017. Before coming to the Netherlands, he studied interior architecture at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Since 2017, Zeiner Christiansen has frequently exhibited his work both in group and solo exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad, most prominently at Galerie Juliette Jongma in collaboration with Nora Baron, De Oude Kerk and  Arti et Amicitiae (with Ivan Cheng), Bologna.cc, as well as Hulias in Oslo. He has been curating exhibitions at Bologna, Pakt, and the self-organized exhibition space Reneenee. In 2021, Zeiner Christiansen was awarded the Young Talent Stipend of the Mondriaan Fonds.