JEVNAKER.- The 2026 exhibition programme at Kistefos will allow the public to immerse themselves in the resurgent role of painting in contemporary art. The programme brings together artists from the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation who, in different but related ways, explore the painterly process as both a physical action and a psychological experience. This year's programme highlights how these artists expand the language of painting – through the use of materials, movement, perception and the relationship between image and viewer – while also showing how their work is rooted in historical and cultural contexts.

With works by Ragna Bley, Ida Ekblad, Oscar Murillo and Albert Oehlen in The Twist, a comprehensive solo exhibition with Issy Wood at Nybruket Gallery, and a monumental new sculpture by Dana Schutz, Kistefos invites the public to encounter artistry that demonstrates the continued relevance and expressive power of painting.

“The programme offers a rare opportunity to experience a group of painters across generations from the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation and Collection, all of whom explore the deep emotional and intellectual potential of painting,” says Kari Roll-Matthiesen, Director of Kistefos.

Kistefos will also present the innovative curatorial programme Springbrett in 2026. In the fall of 2026, Kistefos will unveil another new, ambitious sculptural project, by French artist Marguerite Humeau.

As such, the season continues the institution’s commitment to meaningful encounters between art, nature and architecture, and to supporting emerging voices in the Norwegian art field.

The Twist: When I'm in My Painting

The group exhibition When I’m in My Painting presents a focused investigation into contemporary abstract painting through the work of Ragna Bley, Ida Ekblad, Oscar Murillo and Albert Oehlen—artists represented in the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation and Collection.

Taking its title from Jackson Pollock’s well-known reflection on becoming fully immersed in the act of creation, the exhibition foregrounds the moment when making becomes inseparable from meaning. Here, abstraction is approached not only as a visual language, but as a field shaped by gesture, intuition and material exploration.

Through a dynamic selection of works, When I’m in My Painting traces how these artists navigate the shifting space between intention and spontaneity, testing the boundaries of mark, movement and surface. The exhibition highlights the physicality of abstract painting—the sweep of a brush, the density of pigment, the rhythm of repeated actions—as well as the instinctive decisions and emotional currents that drive each composition.

Central to the exhibition is the studio, understood as both a physical site and a psychological landscape. It is a place where ideas are negotiated through practice, where abstraction emerges through trial, reworking and chance. Visitors are invited into this layered environment, gaining insight into the physical, psychological and metaphysical dimensions of painting as a lived process.

“By bringing together these four distinct approaches, When I’m in My Painting opens a window onto the rich, often unpredictable world behind abstract painting, revealing how artworks evolve through the interplay between artist, medium and moment,” says Kate Smith-Raabe, Kistefos’ Chief Curator.

The exhibition is curated by Kate Smith-Raabe, Chief Curator at Kistefos.

Nybruket Gallery: Issy Wood

In 2026, Kistefos will present a solo exhibition at Nybruket Gallery featuring London-based artist Issy Wood (b. 1993). The exhibition marks her first major presentation in the Nordic region and gives the audience an opportunity to immerse themselves in an artistic oeuvre that has received considerable international attention in recent years.

Wood is known for her psychologically charged paintings that combine intimacy, alienation and cultural criticism. She often draws motifs from the internet, advertising, auction catalogues and popular culture, and reworks them through carefully selected excerpts and atmospheric compositions. Her works explore themes such as desire, power, vulnerability and objectification, while also referencing art historical traditions such as vanitas, portraiture and still life.

Through a distinctive, often dark and understated humour, Wood imbues her motifs with an unnerving presence that points to contemporary aesthetics, consumer culture and emotional life. The solo exhibition at Kistefos will give the public a rare opportunity to experience a central and comprehensive selection of Wood’s work.

The exhibition is curated by Kate Smith-Raabe and Live Drønen, Chief Curator and Curator at Kistefos, respectively.

Nybruket Gallery, 2nd floor: Springbrett 2026

For the third year in a row, Kistefos is presenting an exhibition curated by the recipient of the Springbrett fellowship. Springbrett gives a young curator the opportunity to realise an exhibition based on works from the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation. The project is supported by Sparebankstiftelsen DNB.

Sculpture Park: Dana Schutz

This spring’s addition to the sculpture park is by celebrated American artist Dana Schutz. Since the early 2000s, Schutz has championed painting and its central role in contemporary art practise. Schutz' struggle with gravity kept her from working with sculpture until 2019, when she exhibited her first sculptures. Weighing thirteen tons and cast in bronze, the new work at Kistefos is the largest and most ambitious work Schutz has created to date. Schutz is known for creating complex, allegorical narratives that explore art's ability to represent subjective experiences. The figures in her works often find themselves in seemingly impossible situations, and Schutz's universe can be experienced as a dystopian image of today's world.

Blind Boat is site-specific and will be placed centrally at Kistefos, between Nybruket and the Kistefos dam. Here, the work enters into dialogue with the industrial buildings, the river, and the waterfall. The placement of the sculpture also contributes to raise the artistic ambition at the heart of the historic Kistefos. Through close collaboration with landscape architects At Site, the site has been developed in order to improve accessibility for the public, including additional recreational seating areas and a new viewpoint of the waterfall in the vicinity of the sculpture.

“With this work, Schutz demonstrates a surplus of energy and creative will-power that both insists on and contradicts the doomsday prophecy depicted,” says William Flatmo, Director of the Christen Sveaas Art Collection.

Sculpture: Marguerite Humeau

This autumn, Kistefos will unveil an ambitious new sculptural project by the French artist Marguerite Humeau, situated in the southern forest zone near the river.

Humeau’s practice spans from prehistory to imagined future worlds, breathing life into what has been lost—whether extinct forms of existence or ideas that have faded from our collective memory. The forthcoming work unfolds as a poetic reconstruction of a spruce tree’s life cycle in reverse, a process the artist refers to as de-die. The installation traces the tree’s journey from processed wood pulp back to its origins within the forest’s network of roots and interdependent life.

Comprising a transformed walkway that gestures toward a return to the earth, and a monumental steel tree pigmented with plant-based colour, the work establishes a contemplative dialogue between river and forest—between the viewer and the sculpture itself. The piece will also produce an elixir, stored in glass vessels, symbolising the tree’s inherent vitality