“My work is made in relation to the space or context in which it will be seen, whether it is an outdoor piece, public commission or an exhibition in a gallery or institution. The space surrounding the sculptures, the archi tecture and the landscape is part of what defines and shapes the works.”

– Camilla Løw

Jagged Sky

Jotun AS (Norway), 2022-3

Broken Thrones

Skulpturstopp, Ullensaker (Norway), 2020

When I first encountered the sculptural work of Camilla Løw, I was impressed by how she handled mass and volume. At that time, when other artists were creating emotional installations scattered around seemingly indifferent spaces, Løw stretched against the flow. She created dialogues between her practice and the existing architecture, the physical space and the complex context, when she exposed her work.

In the public realm, Løw has executed commissions of the most varied kinds; for primary schools, universities, private companies, a bank, a court and a military training camp. For all, there has been both a client and an identifiable addressee. The simultaneous challenge and relief for Løw is that public art ‘gets put out there to everybody-some who wouldn’t consider themselves as interested in art. Public art is a gift, though you never know how it will be received.

Løw provokes references for her many interpreters, harkening back to early achievements in modernism: to Constructivism and Suprematism, to De Stijl and even Italian Futurism. I was convinced I could read her work and instantly appreciate her sensibility and intellectual process of ‘re-inventing’ some of my heroes of the past. I thought I was on the safe side, but now I know better.

Her sculpture is not only about mass and volume. It is also about its presence and extension in space, about rest and tension, surface and perspective, weight and speed, site and non-site. But first and foremost it is about light, the most delicate of all artistic materials. Løw’s light can tint our views and tempt us to look straight into a brave new world. It can perforate a wall or an iron curtain and make us see the freedom beyond. It is light that can lift a heavy concrete block from the ground.

– Sune Nordgren

Tistler

Oslo kommunes kunstsamling (Norway), 2018

Echo

KORO (Norway), 2017

Morgenen var så stille

Frogner school and Culture centre, Sørum (Norway), 2017

Double Dynamic

KORO (Norway), 2012

Neon Winter

Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden (Norway), 2012

Alphabet Street

Statoil Headquarters, Oslo (Norway), 2012

Social Geometry

Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden (Norway), 2012

Noon and Midnight

New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury (UK), 2009

utendørs outdoors, Camilla Løw

utendørs outdoors is Camilla’s first monographic publication; specifically focusing on her outdoor sculptures. The publication features a foreword by artist and art critic Sune Nordgren, with further texts by architect Alison Crawshaw, art historian and curator Lavinia Filippi and an interview with gallerist and designer Julia Muggenburg.

utendørs outdoors, Camilla Løw (2019)

Published by: VfmK Verlag für moderne Kunst

ISBN: 978-3-903320-17-8

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Artist bio 

Camilla Løw (b.1976, Oslo, Norway), graduated with a BA in Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art. Through a visual language that recalls Constructivism and Minimalism, Camilla uses industrial materials to carefully compose her structural form. Embracing the sites and the specificities of the materials she works with, Camilla’s work allows for a redefinition of space, in turn, allowing new relations to emerge.

Select exhibitions include: Carla Åhlander & Camilla Løw, Belmacz, London (2022); GIRL MEETS GIRL, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Norway (2022); Space Junk, ISCA Gallery, Oslo (2021); High Rise, ISCA Gallery, Oslo (2020); Alfabet, Belmacz, London (2019); B, Belmacz, London (2019); INSTRUMENTAL (Camilla Løw & Gert Marcus), Fullersta Gård, Huddinge (2018); Collective Collaborations, British Council Collection (touring exhibition) (2018-19); Alpenglühen – 100 years of Ettore Sottsass Jr, Belmacz, London (2017); Eye In The Sky, Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo (2016); NN-A NN-A NN -A – New Norwegian Abstraction, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo (2015); Vibrant Matter, KIOSK, Ghent (2015); Nerves and Muscles, Elastic Gallery, Stockholm (2015); Chain On Chain, Belmacz, London (2014); Dumb Rocks, Belmacz, London (2013); The Space of Shape-Time, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (2012). The Vigeland Museum, Oslo and Dave Allen/Camilla Løw, Frieze Focus, Frieze Art Fair, London (2012); Culture & Leisure, New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury (2010); Social Geometry, Schmidt & Handrup, Cologne (2010); M, Gallery AHO, Oslo (2009); New Ruins, Bergen Kunsthall (2008); Embraced Open Reassembled, Sutton Lane, London (2008); Straight Letters, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee (2008); Straight Letters, Pier Arts Centre, Orkney (2008); Broken Windows, Elastic Gallery, Malmø (2007); Henriette Grahnert / Camilla Løw, Sutton Lane, Paris (2006); Camilla Løw, Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco (2005.

Camilla’s work features in numerable public collections, including: Skulpturstopp sculpture park, Norway; Pier Arts Centre, UK; The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Norway; The British Arts Council Collection, UK; The Government Art Collection (UK); Region Skåne, Sweden; The Ruppert Collection of post-1945 Concrete Art Museum in Kultuspeicher, Wurzberg, Germany; The Statoil Art Collection, Norway; The Storebrand Art Collection, Norway. In 2008 she was awarded the Statoil Hydro-Art Grant Prize for contemporary art.

Camilla lives and works in Oslo.