Johannes Høie references the history of the monumental painting. He builds the composition like a frieze in which the narrative is allowed to unfold over the entire canvas.
Artist: Johannes Høie / Photo documentation: Jon Gorospe
Johannes Høie references the history of the monumental painting. He builds the composition like a frieze in which the narrative is allowed to unfold over the entire canvas.
Artist: Johannes Høie / Photo documentation: Jon Gorospe
Høie uses liquid marker and brush directly on the wall, alternately connecting to the traditional aesthetics of cartoons and calligraphy, near and distant art history. The style is fabulous, wild, and dense in detail – a thicket of references, moods, and symbolism organised in large sweeps across the wall.
Artist: Johannes Høie
Photo documentation: Jon Gorospe
Artist: Johannes Høie
Photo documentation: Jon Gorospe
Artist: Johannes Høie
Photo documentation: Jon Gorospe
Artist: Johannes Høie
Photo documentation: Jon Gorospe
Artist: Johannes Høie
Photo documentation: Jon Gorospe
Artist: Johannes Høie
Photo documentation: Jon Gorospe
Høie’s eclectic pictorial world alternates the classical and expressionist, thematically playing with man’s relationship to the city, society, and nature.
Artist: Johannes Høie Photo documentation: Jon Gorospe
The work can also be read as a contemporary version of monumental medieval and Renaissance paintings, incorporating the richness these works possess in both colour, composition, and storytelling. Just as the monumental painting was supposed to display power and social hierarchies, Høie uses contemporary attributes to highlight challenges and structures in our own time. He combines lightness and darkness, something unfamiliar and something unifying. In a condensed visual language linking it with older art history, the painting also explores what alienation, chaos, and vulnerability can mean today.
Over the course of the last months, Høie has been working outside in all types of weather, painting directly onto this 20 metres wide canvas at 3KT, Aker Brygge. Production is currently on hold and the work will be completed in the spring of 2024.
Johannes Høie (b. 1981) is a Norwegian artist who lives and works in Oslo. He is educated from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. He works with drawing, installation art, and painting. He is known for combining various artistic styles and drawing on different periods in art history.
3KT (Trekanttomten) is Ferd’s urban development project between Aker Brygge and Vika with an estimated start of construction in 2026. Ferd believes that art and culture play an important role in an attractive city. In a big city, there will always be development projects causing the city to become
less available. In an attempt to reverse this, Ferd wishes to open up temporary urban spaces and show temporary art projects during the development period of this property.