​The first retrospective of Catherine Opie’s works in Europe

Henie Onstad introduces the autumn art season with the great retrospective Catherine Opie – Keeping an Eye on the World.

• Welcome to press preview Thursday October 5,10-1130 at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway
• The artist and curator will be present
• Please register at gv@hok.no

-We are proud to be the first art institution in Europe to present a retrospective exhibition of the Los Angeles-based photographer Catherine Opie. She is one of the most important photographers of our time and our audience can look forward to a special encounter with great photography, says Tone Hansen, Director at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter.

Our relationship to photography and photographs has changed dramatically in recent decades. In a time when technology puts a camera in everyone’s pocket and digital photographs are a natural part of communicating through media, the roles of the photographer have changed. We are overexposed and swamped with images and Opie says that, as a photo artist, she needs to capture your attention and hopefully get you to look at her photographs for more than just a second.

Unheard voices

Opie has been presenting images of people, subcultures, landscapes and environments ever since the early 1990s. She is passionate about the rights of minorities, democracy and equality – and how people live their lives.

Through the eye of her camera, Catherine Opie has a unique ability to present areas of society that are rarely given a voice. She explores the concepts of gender and identity. Opie’s commitment to democracy and equality are evident in every one of her works, says Hansen.

Subcultures, landscapes, and Elizabeth Taylor

A consistent characteristic of Opie’s photographic oeuvre is her examination of the way in which a person’s identity is formed by place, society and culture. The exhibition Catherine Opie – Keeping an Eye on the World, presents these characteristics through powerful portraits of individuals and a distinctive series of photographs documenting our surroundings.

Catherine Opie is one of the most important photo artists of her generation. Her career spans nearly 30 years, during which she has made a name for herself through provocative portraits and distinctive images of architecture and landscapes that document life in America. The Høvikodden retrospective offers compelling images from all these genres, says curator Ana Maria Bresciani.

Keeping an Eye on the World offers images of subcultures from the early portrait series Girlfriends (1987–2008), exploring lesbian identity. Another series, Portraits (1993–1997), offers images of the drag community and transsexuals. Opie documents her own personal life in another series entitled Self-Portraits and Dyke (1993–2004) within the LGBT community, of which she is a part.

Catherine Opie's architecture and landscape photographs are presented in the series Freeways (1994), which shows sculptural and architectural structures along highways in the United States. Keeping an Eye on the World also includes photographs from the series Houses (1995), which examines the colourful facades of the homes of some of the rich and famous residents of Bel Air and Beverly Hills, as well as the series Mini-malls (1997), which documents deserted streets and facades of shopping malls in the United States.

The exhibition also features photographs from Twelve Miles to the Horizon (2009). This series of photographs was taken during an ocean voyage on board a cargo ship crossing the Pacific Ocean from Busan (South Korea) to Long Beach, California, during which Opie documented every sunrise and sunset for eleven days.

Keeping an Eye on the World also presents a selection of photographs taken by Opie when she documented the home of Elizabeth Taylor, in which she also created a portrait of the legendary actress – in her absence – using only the furniture, clothing and objects in Taylor’s home.

Catherine Opie's photographs have been presented in exhibitions at Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Photographers' Gallery in London among others. She currently lives in Los Angeles and is a professor of photography at the University of California in LA.

The exhibition Catherine Opie – Keeping an Eye on the World –opens at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter on October 6. It can be seen until January 7, 2018. Henie Onstad Kunstsenter has created an extensive catalogue of the exhibition, which will be made available internationally by the reputable publishing house Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König.