A door as canvas. A door as canvas.

It sounds the same on the street as it does in the gallery space, and for Norwegian Street Artist Anders Gjennestad the two appear nearly identical, aside from context.

Anders Gjennestad. “Canvas”. Published by Galerie Friedmann – Hahn. Berlin 2018

Whether he is discovering the neglected urban factory door long after the spirit of industry has roared its last turbine and reaching toward his backpack for a spraycan, or he is hoisting a piece out from the pile of collected iron-bound wooded slabs in his Berlin studio, functionally each of these doors is a canvas.

Every urban explorer sees the potential of walls that are long abandoned and spoiled with rot and piss and pushed open by weeds, worn away by rain. The world is a temporary place anyway. I am only here temporarily.

Anders Gjennestad. “Canvas”. Published by Galerie Friedmann – Hahn. Berlin 2018

This cavorting, twisting, athletic dance with long shadows by men in hooded sweatshirts is a flicker across the canvas that you catch from the corner of your eye as your life dances by. His stenciled figures are expressive, interactive, fully alive, kinetic in spirit – singular and plural.

The symmetry and rythmic action is sport and performance and energetic expression across this patinaed, warped wood; this oxidized and oddly puckered and heavy iron and brick.

Anders Gjennestad. “Canvas”. Published by Galerie Friedmann – Hahn. Berlin 2018

Step many paces back from the aged factory wall and your perspective has been altered and the burr bushes and Bishop’s weed and crumbled concrete rubble you are standing in are strangely moved, even moving. Staring at his figures as they run diagonally up and across the entire expanse of a massive wall you realize he has tilted them along an axis in such a way and at such a scale that your own feet may be on a plane that is perpendicular to their ground, and you may fall.

You too have begun to dance to Anders’ optics, a figure in his urban choreography, and you too can take flight before gravity pulls you downward, as it will.

Anders Gjennestad. “Canvas”. Published by Galerie Friedmann – Hahn. Berlin 2018

Anders Gjennestad. “Canvas”. Published by Galerie Friedmann – Hahn. Berlin 2018

Anders Gjennestad. “Canvas”. Published by Galerie Friedmann – Hahn. Berlin 2018

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