Fiber

Bård Breivik (b. 1948) was educated at Bergen National College of Art and Design and the Bergen National Academy of the Arts, as well as St. Martin’s College of Art in London. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad. One can note in particular that he was exhibitor of the year at the Bergen International Festival in 1988 and that he represented Norway at the Biennial in São Paolo in 1991.

It was with his exhibition Fibre at Henie Onstad Art Centre in 1981, where he exhibited a series of works under the same name, that Breivik had his real breakthrough on the Norwegian art scene. Since the 1970s he has mainly worked with natural and rather Spartan materials such as wire mesh, mounds of sand, wood and stone, and demonstrated an interest in simple, elementary shapes such as boats and oars. We can see characteristic examples of this in the Savings Bank Foundation’s two works from the Fibre Series. The materials used are wood and metal and the radically stylised and abstract vertical forms are reminiscent of boats.

Since the end of the 70s Breivik has worked in an increasingly abstract idiom and he eventually also made use of more advanced materials such as aluminium and metal. In recent years he has added art commissions and art in public places to his repertoire and among these can be mentioned the columns he created for Torgallmenningen in Bergen, which provoked heated debate long before the project was realised in 1999.

OWG