Fredrik Værslev: Badekaran

In Fredrik Værslev’s exhibition at Stormen kunst/dájdda in Bodø, a grotesque corner bathtub creates one of the most curious coincidences in recent art history: it appears custom-built for the corner it occupies — an ironic stroke of genius involving something inherently ugly. The idea of scattering found bathtubs through the exhibition space and hanging paintings in relation to them originated from a photograph of Christopher Wool’s Riot painting installed above a pool in a modernist villa — a striking image of how art’s “rebellion” collides with its domestication by collectors.

For nearly 20 years, Værslev has combined two inheritances: the legacy of abstract painting in the US and Europe since the 1940s, and the aesthetic sensibilities of the Norwegian middle class. Earlier series referenced patios, privacy fences, venetian blinds, floors, sailboats, and curtains. This new body of work draws on the “Zombie Formalism” discourse of the 2010s, in which Værslev and other younger painters were accused of producing “undead abstraction” — a criticism he now deliberately probes, blending gestures from major postwar painters with references to Edvard Munch.

The word “ugly” comes up remarkably often in conversations with the artist — as with an earlier museum exhibition for which 250 square meters of decking were laid and painted in colors drawn from Oslo Fjord cabins, or the 2022 show at Frac Bretagne, where cheap white plastic garden chairs were placed in front of the works. The same tension appears in Bodø, where the exhibition’s title, Badekaran (“The Bathtubs”), derives from the tubs themselves, while Munch’s Bathing Men adorns the exhibition poster. The result is a interplay of contrast and harmony: ugly and beautiful, high and low, wet and dry.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Fredrik Værslev – Badekaran, held from September 20 to November 9, 2025, at Stormen kunst/dájdda, Bodø (Norway) with the kind support of Kulturrådet and Nordland fylkeskommune.