Per Fronth by ACC Art Books

The Vulnerable, Insecure Being

Per, you’re a storyteller!

Conversation between Per Fronth and writer and psychologist

Maia Kjeldset Siverts

Per calls me. I’m a psychologist, I’m young, I’m a woman—that’s good! It’s what the book needs! Per wants to talk to me, not the celebrity psychologists! He wants to thematize things that are difficult, but it cannot be too heavy; it should inspire. Readers should learn something from it; they must get something back. It should not be too painful and depressing—nope, but it must be honest. Per wants to tell all, every door must be opened—do I get it?

I say I’m interested. Good! This will be brilliant; we can do this. Per outlines the book project on the phone. He’s switched on. He believes in this. He will call me, we will meet, we will email, we will find his demons and smoke them out. Failure is not an option! Go!

Session 1: It’s like I don’t recognize myself!

During our first conversation at my place, Per is full throttle and energetic, just as I experienced him on the phone. He speaks circuitously but engagingly about episodes from his childhood, about his parents’ creative sides, about his own talent, and about capturing the attention of those around him through drawing and photography. As a child, he could disappear into the world of drawing for days, he says. He won competitions and was praised. It felt good. Later, he became interested in photography and spent half of his confirmation money on a camera. “It just stood there and said ‘HELLO PER’!” As a fifteenyear-old, Per introduced himself to the local newspaper’s editorial staff at Dagbladet Sørlandet in Kristiansand, convinced them that he could take good pictures, and received the boss’s blessing to try his hand as a photojournalist.

Then what happened? The first photo Per took—from the parade on Norwegian National Day, May 17, in Kristiansand—ended up all over the front page of the local newspaper. Per explains that this felt like “lighting the fuse,” elaborating further, “It was absolutely fantastic. It is one of my proudest moments. I was so surprised that it was my picture that went to print. I was only fifteen years old. I remember they said I was talented.”

After the successful start of his photo career, Per worked regularly at the local paper before being headhunted to work at national newspapers, including at Aftenposten and a permanent position at Verdens Gang. However, at the age of twenty-six he quit his job and moved to New York, determined to become an artist. He would also succeed in this. “I have succeeded in everything I

Photograph on Per’s First Press Card: Issued to him at the age of fifteen by editor Egil Rosenløv of newspaper Dagbladet Sørlandet in 1979.

Tears of our Lives: Redhead Per at four years old, crying at the hunting farm in Mykland, Norway, captured on Kodak film by his father, Sigurd.

have put my hand to!” At the time of writing this text, Per has been a professional artist for well over thirty years.

Per’s view of the world was noticed early on and recognized by family, friends, newspaper editors, and the general public. At the same time, the need for recognition has not diminished over the years. Per constantly experiences large fluctuations in his self-image. He is alternately confident and self-critical. He explains that his thought space is dominated by an inner struggle with alternating beliefs of mastery and self-blame. Why is he never satisfied? Per explains. “It’s about perfection: the fear of not reaching my full potential, the fear of not getting things done, the fear of not being perfect .” Although he does not want “to have freedom from evil,” he thinks it is “extremely troublesome to speak to himself not as a good friend but as one who is not good enough.”

For many years, the critical voice has at times been overly dominant and powerful. Per does not recognize himself in that voice. It is like a stranger invading his consciousness and his everyday life. The voice hammers on that Per is not good enough, that he will fail. Per points out that if he had said something similar to a friend, he would have been asked to shut up. But the voice cannot be controlled, it does not disappear, and that makes him both despairing and confused.

How does Per relate to his voice, I wonder. Per explains that he is trying to say “stop, that’s enough!” but the self-critical thoughts pop up like a jack-ina-box. We try to think aloud together. Per does not understand why the voice takes up so much space, because, as he says, “Ostensibly, things are very good: girlfriend, family, job, living off art when you have chosen to be an artist and make a good living from it. I have so much to be grateful for. I am extremely privileged, but I forget it.” He continues: “I think it has been difficult to admit to myself that I may have issues with my own self-image. This is, I suppose, not surprising since I work as an artist. I was the sensitive one in our flock; I had a strong attraction to the emotional side of things, for better or for worse.” He says he is sometimes ashamed of being so governed by emotions.

Per and I try to investigate where the critical voice comes from. Not infrequently, the way we talk to ourselves is about how we have been met in our basic needs as children. It becomes clear that there may have been conditions within the family that made it difficult for Per to become completely confident in himself. Per’s father, Sigurd, was a merchant marine during World War II, and there were certain topics they simply did not talk about in the family. Per recalls “a deafening silence around the dinner table.” The communication style in the family has in part been characterized by avoidance and silence. This is not uncommon in families with war trauma. “Transgenerational traumatization” refers to the aftermath of war experiences in families over several generations, not infrequently in the form of unprocessed and concealed emotional pain.1 Talking about difficult feelings often becomes taboo.

In Per’s family, both his mother and father struggled with worry and anxiety. Per describes his father as traumatized by the events of the war, but he was also strong, loving, and confident. His mother, Anne-Lise, was at home with three small children while Per’s father was traveling abroad for long periods. Her first child was born with a disability, and she lost her first husband to cancer. Per was sensitive, wild, and exploratory. He reveals that, in encounters with his parents, he had many questions he did not get answers to. When talking about this, he clearly seems frustrated. I get the impression that the silence in the family may have made him both confused and restless. These are completely

1 Wencke Mühleisen, “Voldslogikken,” Klassekampen, 28.03.2022, https://klassekampen.no/utgave/2022-03-28/voldslogikken

Portrait of my Father 1985: Per Fronth borrowed a Hasselblad camera to photograph his dad, Sigurd, and his hunting dog, Ras.

Portrait of my Mother 1985: A photograph of his mother, Anne Lise, taken during a visit to his childhood home in between travels for newspaper Verdens Gang

The Power Trilogy Series

Introduction

“The Power Trilogy series is an art project venturing right to the heart of discussing hierarchies connected to power, and the architecture of political, financial, technical, and ultimately personal powers we humans possess in order to navigate the uncertain waters in the worlds we live in,” Fronth explains. Power is often defined as the possession of control, authority, or influence of others. We relish power and control in our own lives; after all, we possess free will, but how much power are we comfortably willing to part with in our lives?

The Power Trilogy series was first presented at Fronth’s exhibition Power Trilogy at Fineart Oslo and in tandem with the publication of this book by arnoldsche Art Publishers. Divided into three separate but interconnected branches, the series are loosely tied together as visual short stories in a trilogy: the old(er) power as established in modern politics and some democracies; the explosive new challenge; and the omnipotent mightiness of the tech and finance industries spearheading the evolution of AI. And then we, the somewhat lost human race, are we stuck between the bedrock of organic evolution of human ingenuity and a programmed software revolution? Where will it lead us, where will we lead ourselves, man and machine?

Power Trilogy I: Secretary General

In April 2017 Per Fronth was invited to the NATO headquarters in Brussels to meet the general secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, in his office to pitch and explain his idea for his art project: a new series of works about power, politics, and poetry, with Stoltenberg at the very center of the political ecosystem.

Secretary General Stoltenberg allowed Per Fronth, as a contemporary artist, to be witness to the highest levels of politics. From traveling with his entourage on his NATO chartered plane to different heads of state in presidential palaces and capitols, to bumpy flights on old Cold War Mil helicopters visiting the highly contested Suwałki Corridor with American cavalry on the Polish–Russian border. He was summoned to the inauguration of the new NATO headquarters in Brussels with world leaders attending, and on to the most power-potent room on the planet, the Oval Office, invited by Secretary General Stoltenberg for his meeting with US president Donald Trump in May 2018.

Mr Stoltenberg is a thorough, political thinker and widely known for his ability to get political adversaries to talk together and reach workable compromises and sustainable solutions—until the next challenge arises.

“Secretary General Stoltenberg of NATO, a fellow Norwegian, has, as a leader of the world’s largest military organization, stood up for the values of democracy, truths we now hold to be self-evident: individual freedom with responsibility, respect for human rights, equality before the law, freedom to act, speak, think, and to exercise the sacred freedom to vote. He has been an avid defender of democracy and Ukraine from the unprovoked aggressive attack by former superpower and empire Russia on European soil in February 2022. This project is not political art. This is art about politics and poetry,” Per Fronth insists.

Suwałki Corridor (Cumulus) 2024

Secretary General / Dresscode / Cavalry

Poland-Lithuania-Russia Border Area

From the Power Trilogy series

Mixed media, oil on canvas, sewn 157 × 213 cm

The Product Placement Project

The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic hit the world with a force no one person, people, or country had ever experienced before. For the first time in human history people across the globe faced a common enemy: a virus so small only the most powerful microscopes could detect it, yet so big in the deadly load of its impact with which it disrupted the world economy. Everyone was affected. This directly led to the advent of Per Fronth’s art project Product Placement, in which he, in order to finance his art, introduced product placements of companies directly into his artworks and invoiced them for their participation.

“The pandemic hit me with full force. I had to cancel many planned exhibitions, which are my main source of income to run my atelier with my studio manager, Henrik Aunevik, and my life in general. But it opened up the chance to spend time with my family—and to explore and develop new projects. At the same time, billions of Norwegian kroner were pumped into the arts economy in feverish relief aid by the Norwegian government. And we, the artists, from musicians to writers to visual artists, were in the strongest terms encouraged by the Minister of Culture, Abid Raja, to apply for the new working grants from the state. And so I did,” Per Fronth explains.

“I had been a very privileged artist for many years. My works have been appreciated by the market, by critics, collectors, and collections all around the world. This has given me a solid foundation for continuously creating new works and to actually make a living from being an artist. Norway had imposed a five percent artist’s tax on art sales; my art had contributed millions of Norwegian kroner to this part of the grant economy. Now all of a sudden, things were in shackles. My application for the grant came back. I was resolutely rejected. I had to do something drastic.

Hence the birth of the Product Placement art project,” Fronth says.

Would it be possible to introduce product placement into an artwork, a painting, and get away with it? Fronth asked himself. It was already common in the film and TV industry, but how would the art world react to this? And obviously, what about issues like artistic integrity, commercialization: What is the value of art, and what is art worth? He set out to make certain rules for his project. The companies he asked to participate had to fulfil and reflect certain values Fronth himself tries to live by; they had to be innovative, undergoing transformation, bearers of tradition, challenging, socially conscious, and future-positive. Siem Offshore, Norrøna, Møller Mobility Group, SWIMS, and the well-known French Champagne house André Clouet are all companies integrated in respective artworks.

The Product Placement art project ended up becoming a huge success for Fronth. Even though it generated major controversy among critics, all the works were sold to private collectors and museums. In 2022, the new contemporary art museum Kunstsilo acquired the artwork Mobility Group (Gagosian) for their permanent collection.

China’s White Paper Movement 2022: Across China, in November 2022, people took to the streets in numbers not seen for decades, many holding up blank sheets of paper to symbolize systematic censorship by the Chinese authorities. The demonstrations started in response to measures taken by the Chinese government to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the country.

Collection of Advokatfirmaet Staalesen AS, Norway # I Collection of Nekkar AS, Norway # III Collection of First House, Norway # IV