HM Queen Sonja of Norway & Magne Furuholmen - TEXTURE

Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway and Magne Furuholmen

TEXTURE

Paul Stolper Gallery is proud to present ‘Texture’, a portfolio of ten prints by Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway and Magne Furuholmen, made in support of The Queen Sonja Print Award. The portfolio consists of four individual prints by each artist in an edition of sixty, of which numbers one to twenty are available as a portfolio and the rest individually. There are also two prints in an edition of twenty, made exclusively for the portfolio, signed by both Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway and Magne Furuholmen. The prints are a combination of etching and photo- polymer, 50 x 50 cm on 310gsm Somerset White Satin, printed at Ateljé Larsen in Helsingborg, Sweden, 2015. Other collaborations will also be on view, and all works are donations to the foundation by the artists.

‘Texture’ is an artistic collaboration, both thematically and literally of Her Majesty Queen Sonja and Magne Furuholmen; “since I work mainly with text and she with nature, we made the amalgam word ‘texture' (text + nature = texture)”. Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway has already been making editions of prints for the past five years, etchings of her own photography from walks in nature. Furuholmen took these close-ups of rock-surfaces as a point of departure, adding to them photos of his own sculptures; details of the deformed clay from his own sculptural works-in-progress. The result is a very close working relationship, where they would occasionally interchange each other’s plates and treat them in a non-proprietary way, mixing in colours and techniques on each others etching plates, ending up with shared prints where it is unclear who did what, when, and who reacted to which 'statements’.

The Queen Sonja Print Award was founded by HM Queen Sonja of Norway and renowned Norwegian artists Kjell Nupen and Ønulf Opdahl, together with master printer Ole Larsen in 2011. It is the largest international print award, bestowed biannually, and given to an emerging artist working within printmaking. The recipient of the first International Print Award, 2016, is Tauba Auerbach. In addition, and to commemorate Kjell Nupen, the Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant is given to a Scandinavian artist, and includes a residency at Universal Limited Art Editions, (ULAE) in New York, under the supervision of Bill Goldston, master printer and owner of ULAE.
Her Majesty Queen Sonja and Magne Furuholmen will be present at the opening of the exhibition.