Good luck. Both spiritual and physical; all the way through

ISCA Gallery is pleased to present 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 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 investigates 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 allow 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 that offers a potentiality in which something cathartic, aesthetic, or otherwise magnificent could suddenly manifest itself. Zeiner Christiansen accumulates images and natural objects, distort and reinvents them through the construction of meticulous sculptural puzzles and paintings, where imagination is mixed with the use of symbols or the simplification of complex biology. His approach embraces banality and humor while infusing his works with more serious undertones. He titles his works in a manner that intentionally create a distance from their romantic visual nature in order to not be perceived as too aesthetic. He plays with one of the most common themes in art, landscapes, but purposefully omits the human figure. By zooming in and out, new perspectives are created that point to a futuristic or game-like world where the viewer is positioned as the player. Through these works, he places us in the here and now, like parts of a game that lead to questions surrounding identity and contemporary ambitions.