When I’m In My Painting opened at The Twist at Kistefos Musem

When I’m In My Painting brings together four leading artists in contemporary abstraction in an exploration of painting as both process and presence. Featuring works by Ragna Bley, Ida Ekblad, Oscar Murillo and Albert Oehlen — artists represented in the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation and Art Collection — the exhibition explores how abstraction evolves as a dynamic and experience-based practice. The exhibition is on view at The Twist from 9 May to 11 October.

The title refers to Jackson Pollock’s reflection — “When I am in my painting …” — describing a state in which the boundaries between artist, action, and artwork dissolve. Across the exhibition, painting emerges not simply as an image, but as an activity shaped by gesture, material, and time.

At the centre of the exhibition is a newly commissioned large-scale work by Ragna Bley (7 × 4 metres), where colour unfolds as an immersive environment. The painting draws the viewer into a shifting perceptual field, blurring distinctions between surface and space.

Works by Oscar Murillo introduce a collective dimension shaped through gesture, process, and participation. Built up through layered marks and actions over time, the paintings carry traces of shared authorship, expanding the idea of what it means to be “in” a painting. At Kistefos, this approach connects both to the transient movement of visitors through the exhibition and to the surrounding landscape, where the flow of water and natural processes resonate with Murillo’s emphasis on accumulation, movement, and transformation.

Ida Ekblad’s works bring an improvisational and intuitive energy, combining gestural mark-making with references drawn from popular culture, poetry, and art history. Her paintings unfold through accumulation and collision, resulting in compositions that feel both immediate and layered.

In contrast, Albert Oehlen approaches abstraction through a sustained and critical engagement with the medium itself. His works explore the tension between control and disruption, incorporating digital processes alongside painterly gesture to challenge conventional ideas of composition and form.

Across these distinct practices, the exhibition traces how painting operates as an ongoing negotiation — between intention and accident, control and surrender. At its core lies the idea of the studio as both a physical and psychological space, where artworks emerge through the interaction between artist, material, and moment.

Artists

Ragna Bley
Ragna Bley (b. 1986, Sweden) creates large-scale, immersive paintings that explore the sensory and spatial potential of colour. Working with layered washes and subtle tonal shifts, her compositions unfold as atmospheric environments that challenge perception and evoke shifting psychological states. Bley’s work has been exhibited widely across Europe and the United States and is held in major public and private collections.

Ida Ekblad
Ida Ekblad (b. 1980, Norway) works across painting, sculpture, and poetry, developing a highly expressive visual language rooted in spontaneity and cultural reference. Her practice combines gestural abstraction with influences drawn from street culture, literature, and art history, resulting in works that are both immediate and richly associative. Ekblad has exhibited internationally, including at major institutions and biennials.

Oscar Murillo
Oscar Murillo (b. 1986, Colombia) approaches painting as an expanded, process-driven practice rooted in gesture, materiality, and collective experience. Working across painting, installation, and performance, he explores how marks are made, shared, and transformed over time. His work engages with themes of labour and global exchange, while maintaining a strong physical and sensory presence. Murillo has exhibited internationally and was a co-recipient of the Turner Prize in 2019.

Albert Oehlen
Albert Oehlen (b. 1954, Germany) is one of the most influential painters of his generation, known for his experimental and critically engaged approach to abstraction. Since the 1980s, he has continuously challenged the conventions of painting through a wide range of styles, from gestural abstraction to computer-generated imagery. His work has been the subject of major retrospectives and is held in leading museum collections worldwide.

The exhibition is curated by Kate Smith-Raabe, Chief Curator at Kistefos.