Zinc White Lard, 2020
Installation view


Zinc White Lard, 2020
Installation view


Zinc White Lard (untitled #1), 2020
233x60x342cm / detail
(Timber beams, metal hinges, plywood board, wheels, black metal paper clips, and 91x126cm giclée photo print)



Zinc White Lard (untitled #2), 2020
Installation view


Zinc White Lard (untitled #2), 2020
233x28x245cm 
(Timber beams, metal hinges, plywood board, wheels, black metal paper clips, and 91x126cm giclée photo print)



Zinc White Lard, 2020
Installation view


Zinc White Lard (untitled #3), 2020
233x94x125cm 
(Timber beams, metal hinges, plywood board, wheels, black metal paper clips, and 91x126cm giclée photo print)



Zinc White Lard (untitled #4), 2020
233x60x342cm
(Timber beams, metal hinges, plywood board, wheels, black metal paper clips, and 91x126cm giclée photo print)



Zinc White Lard, 2020
Installation view



Zinc White Lard (untitled #5), 2020
233x135x192cm
(Timber beams, metal hinges, plywood board, wheels, black metal paper clips, and 91x126cm giclée photo print)


Zinc White Lard (untitled #6), 2020
Detail
(Timber beams, metal hinges, plywood board, wheels, black metal paper clips, and 91x126cm giclée photo print)


Zinc White Lard, 2020
Installation view


Zinc White Lard (untitled #7), 2020
233x159x216cm
(Timber beams, metal hinges, plywood board, wheels, black metal paper clips, and 91x126cm giclée photo print)


Zinc White Lard, 2020
Installation view


Zinc White Lard (untitled #8), 2020
233x94x125cm
(Timber beams, metal hinges, plywood board, wheels, black metal paper clips, and 91x126cm giclée photo print)


Zinc White Lard (untitled #9), 2020
233x135x192cm
(Timber beams, metal hinges, plywood board, wheels, black metal paper clips, and 91x126cm giclée photo print)


Zinc White Lard (untitled #9), 2020
233x135x192cm / detail
(Timber beams, metal hinges, plywood board, wheels, black metal paper clips, and 91x126cm giclée photo print)


_ _ 
Digital versions:





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Zinc White Lard
11.09 - 25.09.2020
Gallery Rafael Mihaylov
Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria


Outtake from press release: 
Welcome to the solo exhibition with new works by visual artist Lars Nordby at Gallery Rafael Mihaylov. This is the first appearance of the exhibition series Zinc White Lard, which in 2021 will also be presented at Gallery Sol in Denmark and 12-14 Contemporary in Vienna in 2021.

The exhibition contains photography combined with art installations reminiscent of theater stage flats on wheels. The photographs are taken at various backstages at theaters in Sofia in Bulgaria. Zinc White Lard is a continuation of Nordby’s use of theater aesthetics to explore theatricality in humans’ obsessive approach to identity.


/ / 

Press release from postponed exhibition at Galleri Sol due to COVID-19
Galleri Sol in Bornholm, Denmark
Curator of Zinc White Lard: Sofie Amalie Andersen 


Whether we are stockbrokers, art critics, refugees or presidents, the manuscript always shapes how the role is performed”.
– Kjetil Røed, Kunsten og livet

A prompter is one that whispers.

Since the invention of modern theatre, actors world wide have benefited from prompters. Discretely placed next to the stage, they can with a few hasty words lead the players back on track when the otherwise memorised text disappears, and by that make the actors appear flawless and compelling. Even though human prompters by now are being replaced by digital tools – so called “teleprompters” that projects a scrolling text onto a see through surface – the demand is still the same. As audience, we wish to be deceived – and not be reminded that the actors on stage basically are acting out a manuscript in front of us.

The artist Lars Nordby has recently visited a number of great theaters in Europe. With his camera he has spent the last couple of minutes before the curtain is pulled together with the actors. With these photographs, Nordby portrays the theatre as it looks from the backside. Neither the accurate sentences learned by heart, the choreographed movements, or the perfect lighting is in focus; the fragility behind the layers of the white makeup mixture of zinc, vermillion, and grease has captured the attention of the artist. With his portraits of the human scenes acted out behind the stage, Nordby here highlights some of the dim solemnity lying right behind the spotlight.

Also outside the walls of the theatre we are constantly faced with acting. Changed media reality places higher demands on our abilities to portray ourselves as succesfull individuals, and we expect to see opinion leaders, debaters and politicians act confidently in the spotlight of the media. Spokespersons must be able to ‘deliver’ speeches that they mostly haven’t written themselves in a trustworthy manner in front of a public – the audience – who are ready to judge their performance. In the exhibition space Nordby lets teleprompter-texts with good advice on how to obtain a persuasive behavior scroll before our eyes. He asks us questions about what the actors are really doing when they through layers of theatre makeup and rehearsed lines, brush their clothes, prepare their smile, and step onto the stage? How are we affected by the well prepared speeches and directed gazes? And to what extend are we, the audience, a part of the act ourselves?
- Sofie Amalie Andersen 




The exhibition project is supported by NBK / Norske Billedkunstnere, Arts Council Norway, Municipality of V.Turnovo, and the Danish Arts Foundation: