Frode Felipe Schjelderup: The Outinside Art

Kunsthall Stavanger is proud to present The Outinside Art, a solo exhibition by Stavanger-based artist Frode Felipe Schjelderup. Schjelderup, an ardent devotee of graphic novels, comics, film, metal music and fine art, merges all of these creative forms in his artistic output.

The exhibition at Kunsthall Stavanger draws from across Schjelderup’s body of work and, through its title, takes a jab at the now ubiquitous term “Outsider Art.” The label has most often been used to describe artworks produced outside of the boundaries of official culture, usually by institutionalized persons without artistic training. As a practicing artist with autism and a student of fine art, Schjelderup straddles two worlds and, through his work, presents a unique and unfiltered perspective on neurotypical norms. Taken all together, his sketchbooks, drawings, and paintings create an entire world of his own making; fantastical and yet eerily accurate depictions of life as he understands it.

For this exhibition, sequential narratives drawn in pen and ink are combined with starkly painted portraits to illustrate issues of natural and man-made violence, nationality and belonging, power dynamics, intimate human relationships, subcultures, love, and eroticism; completely free of artifice. Themes and symbols – eyes, snakes, wolves, hands, music and text – dominate Schjelderup’s work and elude to deeper meanings within the otherwise straightforward depictions. As Schjelderup noted in the back of one of his numerous sketchbooks, “Eyes can tell you more than you know.” At different times endearing and haunting, always idiosyncratic and raw, Schjelderup’s work invites a closer look at the world through his eyes.

The exhibition is opened by Annamaria Gutierrez, Chairman of the Stavanger Kommune Board of Culture.

The Outinside Art is accompanied by a screen-printed book and series of limited-edition prints, created in collaboration with Kjetil Brandsdal.

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Frode Felipe Schjelderup (b. 1982, Colombia) is an artist living and working in Stavanger, Norway. Previous solo and group exhibitions include Metallium Fleshammer, Gallery New Jerseyy, Basel, Switzerland, 2010; Summer Exhibition, Gallery Sting, Stavanger, Norway, 2012; The Line is a Lonely Hunter, Gallery New Jerseyy, Basel, Switzerland, 2008; and Raw Art / Outsider Art, Gallery North, Harstad, Norway, 2014. Published graphic novels and comics include Metallium Fleshammer (DMG, Stavanger in June 2011) in collaboration with Kjetil Brandsdal; Bare Snabel, various booklets (publisher: Helge Olav Øksendal et al.) 2011/2012; and A New Time: reprints of "Clock Book" (HOO) 2012, which was awarded the 2012 Stavanger Prize for best book by the magazine Natt & Dag.