Published by Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen and saxpublishers, Vienna
Design: Alexander Nussbaumer, Fondazione Europa


The artists’s book Death of Closeness contains a compilation of texts especially written for the solo exhibition "Avgang" by Halvor Rønning that took place at Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen in 2021. The texts accompany a series of new, overpainted magazine cutouts combined with examples of Rønning’s works from the past 7 years. Each text sets apart Avgang in the subjects of tragedy, painting, death and comics. Attilia Fattori Franchini brings us into the inner workings of the tragic genre, and suggests a link to Halvor Rønning’s practice through a dialectic exchange between oppositional forces – inner and outer. Sabrina Tarasoff dives into what she calls the near emptiness of Halvor Rønning’s partially concealed images. She taps into a progressive malady, a slow degradation of perception and how pictures exhaust and are exhausted. Taking into consideration the social, political, and technological forces at work around painting, Philipp Kleinmichel’s text explores the cultural value of the medium after its declared death and apparent devaluation.

Death of Closeness(2021)

PUBLISHED BY:

Halvor Rønning