Sofie Berntsen
Lik en som ser i drømmer
03/09/2026—03/10/2026
Installation view
Lunar love, 2025/26
Oil pastel on khadi paper, with a found frame.
30 × 37 cm
NOK 15 000 including frame
Installation view
Sommerfuglånd, 2026
Oil pastel on Khadi paper
102 × 170 cm (uten ramme)
NOK 70 000 incl. frame
Et fragment, 2026
Oil pastel on Khadi paper, with found frame.
41,5 × 48,5 cm
NOK 18 000
Installation view
Two fold vision, 2026
Found materials, glass, various drawings and small paintings from 2023, oil pastel on khadi paper.
60 × 76 × 85 cm
NOK 45 000
Detail, Two fold vision, 2026
Installation view
Distant hills, 2025
Oil pastel on Khadi paper
43 × 47 cm
NOK 22 000
Subtle nightvision, 2026
Oil pastel on found paper
17 × 26 cm
NOK 8 000
La petite table pour déjeuner sur l’herbe, 2026
Found materials, glass, drawing, oil pastel on Khadi paper.
43 × 60 × 75 cm
NOK 30 000
“As one who sees in dreams and wakes to find the emotional impression of his vision still powerful while its parts fade from his mind - Just such am I, having lost nearly all the vision itself, while in my heart I feel the sweetness of it yet distill and fall.”
Excerpt from Dante Alighieri’s Paradiso, the third and final part of The Divine Comedy. Translated into English by John Ciardi.
We are proud to present a solo exhibition with new collage and sculptural works by Sofie Berntsen.
Berntsen seeks simplicity in her abstract visual language and in the materials she uses, including found and handmade paper. The exhibition at Salgshallen also incorporates some of her earlier drawings as part of the works.
The exhibition represents a further exploration of the work she has developed in recent years, revolving around her surroundings in Hadeland, where she spends much of her time – the landscape’s open horizon and a natural world that shifts from the figurative to abstraction and back again.
Just as we experience the world through both visible and invisible sensory impressions, Berntsen’s practice seeks forms of expression that can lift us beyond the material world and connect us to another dimension. A large collage has been conceived and developed as a garden governed by its own logic. She seeks to challenge our rational way of seeing and to present reality differently, like a fragmented dream, while stimulating the viewer’s capacity for observation, a quality that nature itself also awakens in us. It is an expression of freedom.
Sofie Berntsen (b. 1968) studied at École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques, Paris (1988–89), Parsons School of Design, BFA, Paris (1989–93), and the School of Visual Arts, New York (1994–95). Her previous solo exhibitions include Glasslåven Kunstsenter, Hadeland (2025), OSL Contemporary, Oslo (2024), Plum Trim, Nesodden (2020), Kristiansand Kunsthall (2019), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo (2014), in addition to numerous group exhibitions in Norway and internationally.
The exhibition is supported by Arts Council Norway.
