Odd Nerdrum

2013 Odd Nerdrum Home Studio exhibition, Maison-lafitte, France 2012 Odd Nerdrum, Forum Gallery, New York, NY 2011 Prophet der Malerei, Panorama Museum, Germany The Kings of Paintings-Anders Zorn-Odd Nerdrum, Blaafarvevaerket, Norway Odd Nerdrum-Taxes and Mistreated Animals, Edsvik Konsthall, Sweden 2008 Odd Nerdrum, First Gallery, Rome, Italy Dark Limbo, First Gallery, Rome, Italy 2007 Odd Nerdrum, Forum Gallery, New York, NY 2006 Odd Nerdrum, Forum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2004 New Paintings, Forum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA New Paintings, Forum Gallery, New York, NY 2003 Odd Nerdrum, Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2002 Current Work, Forum Gallery, New York, NY Current Work, Forum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2000-1 Kitschmalaren, Kulthurset Stockholm, Sverige Traveled to: Listasafn Reykavikur, Iceland, GI Holtegaard, Holte, Denmark 2000 Forum Gallery, New York, NY 1999 Forum Gallery, New York, NY 1998-99 Odd Nerdrum: Two Decades, Paintings 1978-1998 (Retrospective) Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway Museum of Modern Art, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 1997 Forum Gallery, New York, NY 1996 Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA Museum of Contemporary Art, Downtown, San Diego, CA 1995 Forum Gallery, New York, NY Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, PA Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, OH 1994-5 Odd Nerdrum: The Drawings, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA Traveled to: The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AK The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA The Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE 1994 Ingrid Raab Gallery, Berlin, Germany 1993 Odd Nerdrum, Martina Hamilton & Assoc., Inc., Art Chicago ‘93, Chicago, IL 1992 New Paintings, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, NY Odd Nerdrum, Jan Baum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1991 Odd Nerdrum, Lemberg Gallery, Birmingham, MI Odd Nerdrum Drawing Exhibition, Perimeter Gallery, Chicago, IL 1990 Odd Nerdrum, Ingrid Raab Gallery, Berlin, West Germany 1989 Recent Drawings, Martina Hamilton Gallery, New York, NY 1988 Recent Paintings, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, NY Odd Nerdrum, California State University Art Museum, Long Beach, CA Traveled to: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL Madison Art Center, Madison, WI The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO 1987 New Paintings, Martina Hamilton Gallery, New York, NY 1986 Recent Paintings, Germans van Eck Gallery, New York, NY in association with Martina Hamilton Gallery 1985 Odd Nerdrum, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE Charcoal Drawings, Martina Hamilton Gallery, New York, NY 1984 Odd Nerdrum, Martina Hamilton Gallery, New York, NY SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS: 2013 Singular Vision, Forum Gallery, New York, NY 2012 Perception of Self, Forum Gallery, New York, NY Five Decades: Art and Artists of Forum Gallery 1962-2012, Forum Gallery, New York, NY 2010 Contemporary Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture: A Summer Selection, Forum Gallery, New York, NY Sacred and Profane, Portsmouth Museum of Fine Arts, Portsmouth, NH 2009 Enchantment: The Sixth Annual International Distinguished Artist Symposium and Exhibition, The Joseloff Gallery, Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, Hartford, CT. 2008 New Acquisitions, Forum Gallery, New York, NY 2007 Art & Psyche: The Freudian Legacy, CDS Gallery, New York, NY The Fine Art of Drawing: Modern & Contemporary Works on Paper, Forum Gallery, New York, NY The Storm, Forum Gallery, New York, NY Figure It! The Human Factor in Contemporary Art, The Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences, Charleston, WV 2006-7 New Old Masters/ Nowi Dawni Mistrzowie, National Museum, Gdansk, Poland 2005 Figurative Impulse, Forum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA New Old Masters, Naples Art Museum, Naples, FL Important New Works by Forum Gallery Artists, Forum Gallery, New York, NY Then as Now, Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University, WilkesBarre, PA 2004 Recent Acquisitions, Forum Gallery, New York, NY 2003 Contemporary Works on Paper, Forum Gallery, New York, NY Festival dei Due Mondi, Spoleto, Italy Magic Realism: A New Generation, Sangre de Christo Arts Center, Pueblo, CO Transforming the Commonplace: Masters of Contemporary Realism, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA Modern and Contemporary Portraits curated by Townsend Wolfe, Forum Gallery, New York, NY 2001-2 Magic Vision, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR 2001-3 Collecting Ideas: Works from the Mark and Polly Addison Collection, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Identities: Contemporary Portraiture, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit Between Earth and Heaven: New Classical Movements in the Art of Today, Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Oostende, Belgium Re-Representing Representation, Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY. Traveled to: Corning Gallery at Steuben, New York, NY 1999 Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Indomitable Spirits: The Figure at the End of the Century, Art Institute of Southern California, Laguna Beach, CA 1998 The Risk of Existence, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, NY Director’s Choice, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA The Figure, Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, GA Realism Knows No Bounds, Van de Griff Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1995 Re-Presenting Representation II, Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY 1993 Art Chicago, Galerie Gerald Piltzer, Chicago, IL FIAC, Galerie Gerald Piltzer, Paris, France Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL An American Renaissance, Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA The Anxious Salon, MIT Visual List Arts Center, Cambridge, MA 1992 Art on Paper - 1992, Weatherspoon Gallery, Greensboro, NC 1991 Drawings, Koplin Gallery, Santa Monica, CA Summer, Forum Gallery, New York, NY 1990 Two Contemporary Painters, Horsens Kunstmuseum, Denmark The Environment, Williams College Art Museum, Williamstown, MA Images of Death in Contemporary Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 1989 Epiphanies, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, NY 1987 Morality Tales: History Painting in the 1980s, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, NY Traveled to: Laguna Art Museum, Long Beach, CA The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA Ohio State University Gallery, Columbus, OH The Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Miami, FL Goldie Paley Gallery, Moore College of Art, Phil.,PA Duke University Museum of Art, Durham, NC Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE Group Exhibition, The Gotheburg Museum, Denmark The Avante Garde, Los Angles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA 1986 Art for Your Collection 1986, Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence, RI The Here and Now, Greenville County Museum, Greenville, SC The Second Sight: Biennial IV, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA Neo-Neo-Classicism, Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 1985 The Classic Tradition in Painting and Sculpture, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT The Classic Spirit, Martina Hamilton Gallery, New York, NY 1980 Norwegen Heute, Kiel, Darmstadt, Germany 1979 Kulthurst, Stockholm, Sweden 1975 Nordic Romanticism, Lundskunsthall, Lund, Sweden

April 30th – July 30th
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 30th, 6pm

Booth Gallery is proud to announce the opening of Crime & Refuge, the first U.S. solo show since 2012 by Scandinavian-born, European-based kitsch painter Odd Nerdrum, on view at 325 W 38 Street from April 30 – July 30th, 2016. The sixteen paintings have never been exhibited before in America, and many of the paintings account for Nerdrum’s newest work and will make their debut at Booth Gallery. The exhibition shares its name with Nerdrum’s 455-paged monograph, published in 2013, and is without a doubt a telling choice. The work embodies Nerdrum’s vision of human experience in the form of love, solitude, and struggle set in the dusty atmosphere of bleak Martian-like landscapes. Humanistic narratives seep through the canvases and illicit visceral responses –especially in such works as “Dustlickers” and “Cannibals,” which challenge the viewer not to look away.

Internationally renowned as one of the greatest figurative painters, and arguably our greatest living master, Nerdrum brings to Booth Gallery his most recent body of work, inviting fans and gallery visitors to catch up to speed with his current stylistic tendencies and philosophical concerns. In great homage to Apelles, the Ancient Greek master (of whom only written descriptions survive) Nerdrum has named his very limited palette of white, black, yellow and red -the “Apelles Palette.” He is fascinated by the incredible depth and volume the palette creates. Nerdrum’s heavy use of thick underpainting, and multiple applications of all-over glazes, makes his work technically approach the late work of both Titian and Rembrandt. However, unlike these old-masters, Nerdrum’s narratives are not illustrations of Ovid or the Bible but are his own brand of Operatic Drama that comes much closer to a sci-fi thriller. In the last several years, perhaps Nerdrum’s own life experiences have led him to consider archetypal themes of judgment and exile as powerful motifs to explore as Shakespearean drama on canvas.

Born in Sweden as a second world war refugee in April 1944, Nerdrum has established himself in the pantheon of great figurative painters. With laser focus Nerdrum set himself upon the singular goal of painting as well as Rembrandt when he was only 14 years old. Nerdrum studied briefly at the Dusseldorf Academy with the German artist Joseph Bueys who may have influenced Nerdrum’s brand of myth-making.
Nerdrum is also an influential teacher and mentor; since 18 years old, Nerdrum has educated a constant flow of apprentices and now runs the Nerdrum School, a Europeanbased tuition-free apprenticeship program. Nerdrum is also an author of many books, including a collection of short stories, and two books on his kitsch philosophy, entitled On Kitsch (2001) and Kitsch More than Art (2011). Nerdrum’s work is held in several public collections worldwide including in the United States: the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York, New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), New Orleans, Louisiana, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), San Diego,California, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio and in Norway, The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Art, Oslo and in Sweden, The Gothenburg Museum of Art