New York, NY, January 25, 2007: Forum Gallery presents Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, a new body of eleven works by Icelandic painter Odd Nerdrum. The paintings in the current exhibition present a new level of inquiry into the artist’s exploration of the state of humankind’s being.

Nerdrum’s artistic practice has long focused on the emotional state of mankind through group and individual actions. The artist has portrayed man’s quest shadowed by impending doom, struggle, and fear. His figures are often isolated in inhospitable landscapes. Odd Nerdrum’s new body of work continues his search and subject matter, but, in a marked departure, the artist presents his figures removed from the tortured and barren landscapes characteristic of his earlier work; in the new exhibition at Forum Gallery, Nerdrum’s figures are found suspended in space, embracing, kissing, wrestling, struggling, and floating apparently helpless. Earthly human needs are removed: clothing, gravity, and consumption do not figure into Nerdrum’s current compositions.

Coming into his own as a young artist, Nerdrum quickly found that the popular movements in contemporary art placed little emphasis on artistic skill or emotion and humanity in art. Ever since, the artist has trained himself in the styles and techniques of the Renaissance masters, and rejected what he perceives as the irony and mockery prevalent in the abstract and conceptual ideologies of the avant-garde. The paintings of Rembrant, Caravaggio, and Goya and the philosophies of Rudolf Steiner and Emmanuel Kant heavily inform the artist’s work.

Born in Sweden in 1944, Odd Nerdrum studied classical painting at The Art Academy in Oslo and later with conceptual artist Joseph Beuys. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the National Gallery, Oslo, Norway; the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.