Matias Faldbakken

Matias Faldbakken, born in 1973 in Hobro, Denmark, is a multifaceted Norwegian creative, excelling both as an artist and a writer. He honed his artistic talents through studies at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen and the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. 

Matias Faldbakken's Art Style

One unmistakable thread that runs through Faldbakken's body of work is his deliberate choice of materials. He takes framed garbage bags and flattened cardboard boxes, often discarded or overlooked, and transforms them into the canvas for his abstract or minimalistic expressions. The marks on these surfaces don't always confine themselves within the frame; they spill over onto the glass and even the very edges of the frame itself. These marks, smudged and erased, exist simultaneously as both a proposition and its swift effacement, all captured in a single, compelling gesture.

In more recent endeavors, Faldbakken ventures into the realm of sculptural art, using mass-produced objects as his raw materials of choice. Jerry cans, silencers, bags, lockers, bottles, books, VHS cassettes, cardboard boxes, and an assortment of everyday items undergo various manipulations. Often, they're rendered virtually useless in his hands, taking on new forms: stacked, crushed, flattened, painted, cut, everted, or even spilling their contents. In this transformation, these objects navigate a fine line between the iconic and the almost painfully generic, challenging our perceptions of the ordinary and the extraordinary.