Dow Jones Or Corona?
05.06.-30.06.2021
Paal Bugen
Solo exhibition
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My education is Business, Finance and then Law-studies. My first job was as a journalist and later editor, before I switched into stockbroking and banking industry. But have been painting since I was a child. I found its time to exhibit and has started to post my paintings on FB, Instagram and Youtube, under my own name. And the response has been great. You can see my gallery there. They are all from different times and series.
After 9-11 I started working on the series I call “A brief history of the Dow Jones Index”. I had some meetings in Twin Towers the following week, with Cantor Fitzgerald, but they were all annihilated in the horrible attack. I picked up painting as some sort of therapy. And the outcome was 100s of paintings, made over almost 20 years. They are all easy recognizable because I write the stockindexes in them the day its finished.
When Corona came and shutdown started, I painted The Caveman, Ancestors, The Abyss, Sympathy for the devil, Marilyn and a lot of others in what I call The Coronaseries. I wanted to show what shutdown did to ordinary people and families, and show the pain. People screaming. I have some scream-paintings that I turned around, they were just to strong to look at.
In the recent months I have also made a lot of portraits of deceased artists, like Freddie Mercury, John Lennon and Leonard Cohen.
I exhibited some paintings in Milano last year, and this year I have planned Venice (with Its Liquid) Oslo, and I consider Dubai later in the year.
Exhibitions and events
2021
Barcelona Contemporary, Valid World Hall
Body Language, The ROOM, San Marco Venezia
2020
M.A.D.S Milano, Italy
Art Statement
I make a lot of different, but allmost allways abstract art. My goal is often that one will se something different in the painting when you study it. It shall bring energy to the room with beautiful colors, and some mystery to the viewer, with questions and statements I write in the canvas.
In my earlier paintings I wrote a lot in the canvas. To try to make a starting point for an intelligent conversation. For instance: -Isn’t the square root of 9 also -3? As a reminder that the obvious answer is not always the only possible one. But it also points to a possible flaw in western mathematics.
In the recent paintings I often use symbols from our time, like the apps and the new signs and language that is developed around this the last 10 years. And its is global. Everyone knows it from their phone.
In the Dow Jones series, I made some paintings inspired by Planck-time, because the compression of the universe, and the expansion, is the most complex I can imagine (except woman, of course). At the Plancktime the universe was compressed to the size of a ball. Many of these paintings use the format of TV-News at the time, , that had a red newsflash BREAKING NEWS and the stock market tickers running over the screen, and things popping up all over the screen.
In the recent year I have made the Corona series. It started with a cave-painting during lockdown, and has just escalated. The series have the abillity to change dependent on distance from the painting. Covid-1-3 and 5 meters. I try to use energetic colors and paint exiting stories. The Abyss is about the free falling many felt when they had to shut down their businesses. While Marilyn is a painting that changes with the Covid-distance. When you go close you see something totally different than from 5 meters.
