Jørgen DoblougPunktum. Punktum. Komma, strek – å male er en lystig lek

In 2013, Jørgen Dobloug became the first living Norwegian artist with a solo exhibition in Galleri Star.

The title Jørgen Dobloug: Punktum. Punktum. Komma, strek – å male er en lystig lek can be translated into:
Jørgen Dobloug: Full stop. Full stop. Comma, line – painting is a game with signs.

This was the year VKL expanded with new exhibition spaces, offices, conference room, and an education workshop. Galleri Star had previously been located in "Arena Vestfossen" – one of the old industrial buildings further up in the factory row, but now it was located in the new exhibition spaces of the Kunstlaboratorium, and Dobloug's art was the first to be shown there.

In a Norwegian context Jørgen Dobloug (1945–2018) is an important figure, an artist who chose to leave the country and what he described as a too rigid art education in search of his own artistic path. Dobloug had a long career with many exhibitions at home and abroad, and it was with great pleasure that we presented his art for the Kunstlaboratorium's visitors.

In the early 1970s the young, ambitious Jørgen Dobloug applied for a place at the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo, but didn't get in because of his undeveloped drawing skills. Or more correctly, his inability to draw naturalistically, or anatomically correct – which at the time was an entrance qualification. This did not stop Dobloug who instead enrolled at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. It was in Joseph Beuys' monumental sculpture class that the artist embarked on a seven-year-long exploration of art and life, a journey which – according to Dobloug – continued the rest of his life. Beuys (1921-1986) was by then a living legend in the international art world, and Dobloug was inspired by his credo that every person has an artist deep within.

Jørgen Dobloug represents something "different" in Norwegian art. To call him "alien" would be to go too far, even though he gladly called Germany his second home till the end. In the title of the exhibition we tried to capture something of this "otherness": Punktum. Punktum. Komma, strek – å male er en lystig lek (approximately translated: Full stop. Full stop. Comma, line – painting is a game with signs.) Dobloug did indeed adopt a playful approach to art. But this concept of playing and laughing through art also embraces reflection, attitude, and resistance – a "trinity" of values we hoped the exhibition, produced in cooperation with the artist, exploreed and communicated.

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The year after, in 2014, the Exhibition Hall was given to the second part of this Dobloug-exhibition. Read about the 2014-exhibition here.

VKL published a book about Jørgen Dobloug in 2017, which can be bought in our bookstore.

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Photo: Vegard Kleven

Participating artists

• Jørgen Dobloug