Torrance Art Museum and Møre and Romsdal Art Center
Contours of Being

Contours of Being is a collaborative project between the Møre and Romsdal Art Center in Molde, Norway and the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles, California. It is part of a two-part project that will also result in an exhibition in Los Angeles in the autumn of 2027.

Gathering artists from opposite sides of the world, it unfolds as a rich, interwoven exploration of experience, form, and the layered complexities of human presence.

Through diverse media—painting, abstraction, gesture, figuration, and performative mark-making—the works in this exhibition traverse the terrain between the palpable and the psychological, inviting viewers into a space where memory, embodiment, and materiality intersect.

At the heart of this exhibition is a shared interest in how marks and forms carry histories—personal, cultural, and aesthetic—and how these histories shape perception. The contributing artists, each with a distinct voice and visual language, engage in a collective dialogue about the ways in which physical presence and remembered experience are inscribed onto surfaces, spaces, and bodies.

Each artist enters the conversation from a different direction, yet their practices touch at the edges, forming a constellation of gestures, atmospheres, and inner landscapes.

The participating artists include:
Jon Arne Mogstad
Trine Røssevold
Cecilie Nissen
Simon Wågsholm
Carlos Beltran Arechiga
Jorin Bossen
Fatemeh Burnes
Vita Eruhimovitz
Jenny Hager
Perin Mahler
Max Presneill
Marie Thibeault
Steven Wolkoff
Carl Baratta
Atilio Pernisco