ArtistNorwegianb.1952
Per Inge Bjørlo
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Per Inge Bjørlo was born on 20 November 1952 in Ålesund on the west coast of Norway and grew up in the nearby suburb of Spjelkavik. He studied at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design from 1974 to 1977, then continued at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo until 1981. He has since lived and worked in Hønefoss.
His practice is wide-ranging and spans painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and large-scale installation. The recurring series 'Indre rom' (Inner Spaces), developed from the early 1980s onwards, is considered among the first installation works to enter Norwegian art institutions. These works are not simply objects to be looked at - they are structures one can enter, environments that condense personal memory, physical sensation, and psychological space into a single form. Bjørlo has described his art as built 'from the inside and out', meaning that the interior logic of a work - its emotional and biographical charge - determines the materials and form it ultimately takes.
The materials he uses reflect this open attitude toward making: stainless steel, glass, rubber, fire briquettes, textiles, and plastic have all appeared across his body of work. The result is an art that moves fluidly between figuration and abstraction, between the intimate and the monumental. His ongoing project 'The Weight of the Lung and Crow Sound', begun in 2012 and shown at Gerhardsen Gerner in Berlin, exemplifies his approach - a sprawling, accumulative installation of paintings, drawings, objects, and sculptures that continues to grow over time.
Public commissions form a significant part of his output. The most visible of these are the six large stainless-steel sculptures titled 'Alexis', installed on the landside of Oslo Airport, Gardermoen, which opened in 1998. He is also represented in the permanent collection of the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, and has exhibited internationally at the Venice and São Paulo biennales, as well as in Berlin, Tokyo, New York, and Cologne. The Kistefos Museum and Ekebergparken in Norway both hold examples from the Inner Spaces series.
Bjørlo received the Prince Eugen Medal in 2012, awarded by the Swedish king for outstanding artistic contributions by Nordic artists. On the auction market, his works appear regularly through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo. Among the 12 works recorded on Auctionist, the graphical work 'Chernobyl Bird' from 1986 achieved the highest result at 10,000 NOK, followed by 'Eg sjølv' (1976) at 2,500 NOK. His works at auction are predominantly prints and works on paper, categories that reflect the breadth of a practice rooted equally in drawing and in three-dimensional form.