Born in 1973, Henrik Placht is an artist from Oslo in Norway, educated from The Academy of Fine Art Bergen, in Norway and Academy of fine Art Berlin, Weissensee. Using a modern and flexible language of painting, drawing and prints, Henrik’s topics range from pure geometry and aesthetic to international politics, architecture, environment, article physics, science fiction, personal and emotional events that have changed his work, as well as his travels.
Henrik Placht’s works have been exhibited in Spain, Germany, Portugal, USA, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Jordan, Palestine/Israel and Norway and are in some of the most prominent collections in the world, among them The Astrup Fearnley Museum, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design Norway & Christen Sveaas Collection. His works are also in private and public collections in Germany, America, Jordan, Denmark, Israel, Spain, Norway, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia.
Henrik Placht has been guest lecturer/professor/tutor in several academies and universities in Europe, Middle East (ex.BEZALEL) and USA ( ex. Columbia University NY). He is also a social entrepreneur and an institution builder. One of his achievements is the establishment of The International Academy of Art Palestine IAAP which he initiated in 2002 and left after total establishment and funding in 2009.
Henrik Placht has also assisted artists such as Yoko Ono, Kjartan Slettemark, Malcolm McLaren and he has also worked as an art critic. Additionally he has curated numerous exhibitions in Europe and the USA.
For the exhibition Ultra long term nostalgia, Placht has produced a completely new series of paintings in various formats. Placht is an eminent colorist and his paintings can be described as geometric abstractions. The paintings consist of intricate layers or webs of colors, shapes and meaning-creating elements.
Nostalgia is a longing for the past - especially "the good old days" and a more uncomplicated time. However, human history is and has always been complicated, crucal, urgent and full of conflict. Not at all places at all times but complexity, chaos and things seeming too out of control is not a new or just contemporary phenomenon. It only seems that way because we're living it in this now. What has happened before in other times, more or less recent, is easy to understand as settled and therefore seemingly easier to control than this everchanging now. So we long - backwards. We romanticize the past, or own or other people's pasts in other times.
Henrik Placht plays on this idea of nostalgia, this longing for a different time. In his works, he uses different defining historic moments and legends. Like the legend of Menelik I, the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, who secretly stole the Ark of the Covenant and took it to Ethiopia. Or the Battle of Gaugamela between the armies of Alexander the Great and King Darius III, considered to be the final blow to the Persian Empire. Or the legend of Ziggurat where the languages arose in Babylon. At the same time, there is an 80s sci-fi aesthetic in his works and a play on bad movie titles - something more close to our own present time. Grand times and defining moments are all mixed up in Plachts concept of ultra long term nostalgia.
Although his works may, at first glance, give associations to abstract expressionism, they also point outwards to something other than painting as an artistic phenomenon. Using a modern and flexible language of paintings, drawing and prints, Placht’s topics range from pure form to international politics, architecture, environment issues and particle physics, to personal and emotional events. We can see elements of the landscape, the firmament, stars and building constructions. These elements, or fragments, can give associations to ancient cultures or the sci-fi universe, as we know it from Western popular culture, from the 1960s onwards. Placht creates a completely distinctive visual universe where the futuristic meets the nature we know and the mechanical visual world we surround ourselves with.
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