Group exhibitions include Art Singapore Art Fair, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Singapore (2024); The Bunker Artspace (Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody), The Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach, USA (2023); CAN Art Fair, with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Ibiza, Spain (2023); Palmen aus Plastik. Sommer, Sonne, Soziale Ungleichheit, Galerie Waidspeicher, Kunstmuseum Erfurt, Germany (2023); Where the Wild Roses Grow, Kristin Hjellegjerde, Schloss Goerne, Germany (2023); The Bunker Artspace 2022 Installation Exhibition, The Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach, USA (2022); Facing the Sun, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Schloss Görne, Germany (2021); Drawing Room Lisboa, with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Berlin & London, Germany & UK (2021); Specially Normal, with Christina Banban, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2018); We are the ones..., Carlsberg Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2017); Hostutstillingen, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway (2017);  Gifc, The hole, NYC, USA (2017); Gifc, Soulland, Copenhagen, Denmark (2016); Festival a Porta, Casa Plastica, Leiria, Portugal (2017); Hex, Masterutstillingen Khib, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2016); Artists as independent publishers, Royal College of Art, London, UK (2016); Artists as independent publishers, Museum Weserburg, Bremen, Germany (2016); Spring show, Kunstakademiet, Bergen, Norway (2015); Rundgang, Kunstakademiet, Copenhagen, Denmark (2015); NoOSphere, New York, USA (2014); Anonyme Zeichner, Pavillon am Milchhof, Berlin, Germany (2014); Pluss Pluss, Black Box, Oslo, Norway (2013); Wall to wa//, 31B, Oslo, Norway (2013); Nogo, Balneario, LX Factory, Lisboa, Portugal (2013); 66 malerier, Bergen Kjøtt, Bergen, Norway (2012); and Monster Drawing Rally, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA, USA (2012); as well as Weekend warriors, PrøveRommet Bit Teatergarasjen, Bergen kjøtt, Bergen, Norway (2012), among more.

 

Highlights and collections. 

In 2017 Audun Alvestad received a 3-year working grant for young artist from the Arts Council Norway, Prosjektstøtte, Norwegian association of Artists. In addition, in 2016 Audun Alvestad was granted Statens utstillingsstipend, from the Arts Council Norway, Prosjektstøtte. Alvestad's work can be found in many public and private collections amongst them The Bunker Artspace, USA; Preuss Collection, Azman Museum, Drake and Lohia Collection.

Alvestad’s tongue-in-cheek titles point to a sense of irony in these depictions of the struggling artist – praying for inspiration or trying to shortcut the process through booze – that also point to the ways in which art-making continues to be romanticised. My story might be true, for instance, contains all the trappings of a bohemian lifestyle: plates of half-eaten food, a bottle of wine, a cigarette burning in an ashtray, open books and canvases. But this is, at least in part, an imagined scene: the artist is dozing, head in arms, the world around him coloured by his dreams. The illusion of choice depicts another interior space, this one occupied by two figures who are in close proximity but separated, absorbed in their own thoughts. The ghostly blue tones emphasise the sense of disconnect. In this work, as in others, the exterior world intrudes on the interior, evoking the collapse or merging of boundaries—perhaps hinting at the possibility for connection, if not here and now, then in the future.

 

This sense of dissolution, of a fluid state, is further explored through works such as Emphatic resonance and People think I’m sleeping, laying on the floor, which blend figuration with areas of abstraction. The titles again express Alvestad’s dry sense of humour and perhaps an element of self-consciousness – at wanting and needing to embrace the process, ‘to go with the flow.’ But there is also a vulnerability to these works in their bruising, watery hues, and nude figures, which alternately appear almost god-like in their monumental scale, as if their limbs are carved out of the earth or sky, and at others lost, half-formed to the point of being barely visible outlines. The presence of vessels throughout the series – sometimes used to collect water, store brushes or house plants – evokes both everyday rituals and ancient practices: acts of gathering, preserving, and making sense of what’s around us. Bottling inspiration is a vaguely absurd idea, but also deeply familiar – the desire to hold on to moments of clarity or creative flow, to save them for when we need them most.

 

In a sense, these are the undercurrents that run through the work: not the image of the solitary artist locked away, but the shared, shifting experience of being human – of navigating uncertainty, seeking connection and finding moments of stillness amid the noise.