17.mai/What a wonderful world

This picture began with an unease I could not shake off. A sense that two realities exist at the same time without ever really meeting. In the foreground we stand close together, raising our glasses, celebrating Norway's national day, the seventeenth of May, as we always do — with light, laughter and a security that almost feels self-evident. The bodies are warm, open, alive.

Behind this lies something else entirely. Darker. More dissolved. People who are no longer allowed to be individuals, only movements in a mass of violence and survival. I did not paint it as a specific scene, but as a weight pressing into the picture.

What interests me is not only the contrast, but the absence of reaction. The sunglasses hide the eyes. Not merely as style, but as a way of avoiding the gaze of something difficult to take in. Perhaps it is not indifference, but a form of protection. Perhaps both.

This is a figurative painting that moves within Norwegian contemporary art, and it examines how we live at a distance from what happens elsewhere. An original painting for sale, painted by Trond Berg-Nilssen, for collectors of figurative art who can take a certain friction.

Artist

Trond Berg-Nilssen

Technique

Oil on canvas

Size

100 × 95 cm

Price (excl. art royalty)

NOK 32,500

Edition

Original work — 1 of 1

Signature

Trond Berg-Nilssen

Represented by

Trond Berg-Nilssen gallery

Shipping

Personal delivery in Southern Norway, guaranteed shipping via Posten elsewhere

Framing / other

Without frame