INGER JOHANNE GRYTTING
(b. 1949)
Inger Johanne Grytting (b. 1949) is a Norwegian-born, New York-based artist whose post minimal drawings and paintings focus on the primal impulse of mark-making. The work is a meditation on what can and can't be controlled in the material, the hand, and the mind. Her artworks are in the collection of The National Museum of Art (Oslo, Norway), Stavanger Kunstmuseum (Stavanger, Norway), KODE (Bergen, Norway), and have been exhibited in New York City, Norway, Denmark, and Japan.
WESTWOOD GALLERY NYC is the exclusive worldwide representative for Inger Johanne Grytting.
For any inquiries regarding acquisition, artwork prices, or exhibition, please contact the gallery at info@westwoodgallery.com.
© Inger Johanne Grytting.
Inger Johanne Grytting, 2022. Photograph by Ruth Mirsky.
Courtesy the artist and Westwood Gallery NYC.
ARTWORK
Inger Johanne Grytting’s reductive drawings and paintings are born of a singular focus on gestural mark-making. Grytting uses limited media as she creates with an 8B Faber Castell graphite pencil for her abstract drawings and close contrast values of oil paint for her canvases. Her influences include Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, Brice Marden, Alfred Leslie, Richard Serra, Vija Celmins, Ad Reinhardt, Eva Hesse, her mentor and friend Jan Groth. She also is inspired by the light from her hometown of Svolvær, Lofoten Islands, Norway.
Grytting is interested in the small, unexpected seismic accidents that enter her process, like when a pencil tip breaks and a small white dot enters the picture plane. The main element in her drawings and paintings is the repetitive, horizontal line. She surrounds herself with a set of self-determined limits which create order but still leave room for her intuition to fill her paper or canvas. Although her drawings and paintings both use the element of line, they differentiate in unexpected variables, such as when Grytting’s pencil line changes in intensity on her paper or when her brush doesn’t quite cover the Burnt Sienna underpainting on her canvas. The result is left open to an energy of the moment, a synergy of movement without control of outcome.
DRAWINGS
“With an 8B Faber Castell pencil on paper I layer horizontal lines in dense columns and build the drawing by repeating the gesture over and over again. Each time the pencil point breaks, I leave a small, white space. No lines are identical. I’m interested in what I cannot control, the variable strength in my arm, impurities in the paper, the inability to exactly repeat the speed of the gesture. The process is a probing inwards, where motions and insights are translated into graphic expressions.”
- Inger Johanne Grytting
“My work describes a primal joy in mark making. The more there are of them the more I feel alive.”
- Inger Johanne Grytting
PAINTINGS
“My paintings are oil on canvas. I cover the white gesso surface with a thin, gestural underpainting of Burnt Sienna. When this has dried, I mix two close contrasting colors. I now build the parallel lines and their background with a # 2 filbert brush. In places, fragments of reddish underpainting show through.”
- Inger Johanne Grytting
BIOGRAPHY
Born in the small town of Svolvær, Lofoten Islands in northern Norway, Inger Johanne Grytting took her first art classes from local artists as a teenager and began painting in oil at 15 years old.
In 1972, Grytting moved to the Bowery in New York City, where she studied art at City College of New York. She is grateful to have been guided by her friend and mentor Jan Groth (1938-2022) who introduced her to the New York art scene. Despite not receiving traditional art training, Grytting met many American artists among her circle of friends like Alfred Leslie, Albert Maysles, Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, Tod Papageorge, Mariana Cook, Helen Wilson, and Chaim Gross, and explored many New York art galleries and museums on weekends, all which she credits as her greatest teachers. Shortly thereafter, Chaim Gross brought her to The New School as an assistant in his sculpture class, and later as an assistant at the Educational Alliance, where she taught Gross’ class.
In addition to her art practice, Grytting was the art director of Fiction Magazine for over forty years, where she connected international writers and visual artists.
Inger Johanne Grytting’s artwork is exhibited internationally and collected by museums and private collections. Selected museum exhibitions include The Vigeland Museum (Oslo, Norway), and Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum (Tromsø, Norway). Her artworks are in the collection of The National Museum of Art (Oslo, Norway), Stavanger Kunstmuseum (Stavanger, Norway), Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum (Tromsø, Norway), KODE (Bergen, Norway), and others.
Grytting's first-time solo exhibition at Westwood Gallery NYC will debut November 2022.
EXHIBITIONS
INGER JOHANNE GRYTTING:
LIFE LINES
NOV 19, 2022 - JAN 21, 2023
WESTWOOD GALLERY NYC
EXHIBITION HISTORY
SOLO EXHIBTIONS
2022 - Inger Johanne Grytting, Westwood Gallery NYC, Nov - Jan
2017 - New Drawings, The Vigeland Museum, Oslo, Norway
2016 - New Work, Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo, Norway
2015 - Extensions, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø, Norway
2014 - Muriel Guépin Gallery, New York, NY, USA
2013 - Galleri Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway
2013 - Recent Work, The Boiler Room Gallery, Oslo, Norway
2012 - Nordnorsk Kunstnersenter, Svolvær, Norway
2012 - New Paintings, Rose Burlingham Gallery, New York, NY, USA
2010 - Lines Among Lines, Trygve Lie Gallery, New York, NY, USA
2005 - Tromsø Kunstforening, Tromsø, Norway
2005 - Bodø Kunstforening, Bodø, Norway
2005 - Atelier Lofoten, Svolvær, Norway
2003 - Tegnerforbundet, Oslo, Norway
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022 - Artists and Immigrants: The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, New York
2018 - Light Lines: The Art of Jan Groth, Inger Johanne Grytting and Thomas Pihl.
2018 - Scandinavia House, New York
2018 - Slow Walz, Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Stavanger, Norway
2018 - Chart Design, Copenhagen, w/Ram Galleri, Oslo
2017 - Oslo Kunsthandel, Oslo, Norway
2017 - Images of the North, Touring exhibition in Japan by Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum
2017 - Thru The Rabbit Hole 2, Sideshow Nation V / Life On Mars, Brooklyn, New York
2016 - Treasures — Skatter, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø, Norway
2016 - Platons Huskestue, Tegnerforbundet, Oslo, Norway
2016 - Brudd og kontinuitet — Tegnerforbundet 100 år, Oslo, Norway
2015 - TMC International, Sag Harbor, New York, USA
2015 - Inexhaustible Beauty: Works from Sparebank1 Nord-Norges Stiftelse, Norway
2015 - The Word of Modern Art: Artists as Writers, The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, New York, USA
2015 - Passasje, Bodø Kunstforening, Bodø, Norway
2014 - Twenty-three Artists from In and Around, Bushwick Open Studios, Brooklyn, NY, USA
2014 - 12 falsa ark, Nordnorsk Kunstnersenter, Svolvær, Norway
2013 - Disegno.3, The Boiler Room Contemporary Art Projects, ArtCopenhagen, Denmark
2012 - Righteous Perpetrators, A.I.R Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2012 - Higher Ground, Drawings from the collection of Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø, Norway
2012 - Water, water everywhere, The Boiler Room Gallery, Oslo, Norway
2011 - Paralleller, NordNorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø, Norway
2011 - Selected Works from the Collection of Sparebank1 Nord-Norges Stiftelse, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø, Norway
2011 - Art Chicago, w/Muriel Guépin Gallery, NY, USA
2010 - Heiberg Cummings Gallery, New York, USA
2008 - Hommage à Iver Jåks, Nordnorsk Kunstnersenter, Svolvær, Norway
2007 - Tegnerforbundet’s Vårutstilling, Oslo, Norway
2005 - Far East, Christiansands Kunstforening, Kristiansand, Norway
2005 - Den 59. Nordnorske Kunstutstilling, (& 02, 00, 94, 93, 92) Bodø, Norway
2004 - Nordnorsk Samtidskunst Triennale, Tromsø Kunstforening, Tromsø, Norway
2000 - Mørketidsutstillingen, Tromsø Kunstforening, Tromsø, Norway
2001 - Tegnerforbundet’s Vårutstilling, Oslo, Norway
1998 - Statens 111. Kunstutstilling, Oslo, Norway