The exhibition BALLENSQUE presented the art photographer Roger Ballen’s mesmerising universe in the form of a retrospective of his most probing and challenging works. Through a selection of analogue photographs combined with movies and projections, his psychologically powerful and intricately layered interpretations took the shape of a compelling and potent experience.
Ballen increasingly brings painting, drawing, sculpture and graffiti to the foreground of his work. He distances himself from realistic representation and focuses on the image as a manifestation of a state of the mind or the soul, vision, dream or even nightmare. The figurative forms of Ballen’s expression seamlessly blend with newspaper clippings, cardboard drawings reminiscent of the Art brut-aesthetic cultivated by Jean Dubuffet or the Graffiti series of photographs by Brassaï.
The Norwegian sound artist Timon Botez collaborated with Ballen creating a distinct soundscape augmenting the emotions of the works presented.
Included in the exhibition was also a VR experience of BALLENSQUE, initiated by COLLECTIVE OSLO and produced by OONI Studio in New York. The exhibition was set in an old circus tent at Aker Brygge, Oslo, Norway, produced by COLLECTIVE OSLO in collaboration with Willas Contemporary Gallery.
"The images I create, I create not to inform. They are much rather meant to be understood as a coherent commentary on the chaos in our incomprehensible world. If I could attach any meaning to the images, they would be nothing more than simple photographs"
– Roger Ballen
