OSLO.- On Saturday September 13th, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art opens the exhibition Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol.The exhibition contains 44 masterpieces from 1962 - 84, some of which has not been exhibited for many years. In addition the audience can experience one of Andy Warhol’s sculptures and the installation Silver Clouds, 4 wallpapers, 11 of Warhol’s films and two TV-shows.

In this exhibition, we invite audiences to experience some of Andy Warhol’s great masterpieces, works that revolutionised the notion of art. These paintings completely transformed how we understand the practice of art marking. Andy Warhol, often referred to as an ‘artist in third person,’ encapsulated the consumer society of his time by integrating the leading images, hopes and aspirations of post-war into his art. He did so with such authority and conviction that his art, his persona, became a brand in its own right, much like the objects and ideas he depicted.As the title, Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol insinuates, we would like to encourage audiences to reflect upon Warhol’s personal involvement with his art and his subject-matter, to place the artist in the centre not only as an icon and an ‘artist in third person’ but as a person with extreme commitment to the times in which he lived. It is thus our hope that this exhibition exceeds well-rehearsed clichés about Andy Warhol and emphasises instead the ambition, subjectivity and consciousness of Andy as a person.

To guide us in this adventure the museum together with Skira has published an extended catalogue. Where we are privileged to add to the body of discourse important new articles by prominent scholars and writers. Introduction by Gunnar B. Kvaran and articles by Graham Bader, Rachel Baum, Judith Benhamou-Huet, Glenn O’Brien, David Carrier, Jane Daggett Dillenberger, Steven Watson, Aram Saroyan, Svein Inge Sæther and an interview with Gerard Malanga.

The exhibition curators are Gunnar B. Kvaran, Hanne Beate Ueland and Grete Årbu.