Erik Asla is a Norwegian-born photographer, based in Santa Monica, California. After moving to the U.S. from Paris, France, he became a protégé of celebrated image-maker Herb Ritts. Encounters with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein compelled Asla to resist the genres in which his mentor built an illustrious career. Asla was drawn to the solitary endeavor and unconstrained expressive boundaries presented by fine art photography.
Select Solo Exhibitions:
‘The Stillness of Motion’ - Janssen Art Space, Palm Springs, USA, 2017
‘The Stillness of Motion’ - Galleri Semmingsen, Oslo, Norway, 2018
‘Bevegelsens Stillhet’ - Drammens Museum, Drammen, Norway, 2021
‘Elsewhere’ - Galleri Semmingsen, Oslo, Norway, 2024
Select Public Acquisitions:
The U.S. Department of State, Washington D.C., USA
Viking Cruises, Basel, Switzerland
Bank of Norway, Tønsberg, Norway
Labor and Welfare Department, Oslo, Norway
BI School of Finance, Stavanger, Norway
Hevold Group, Oslo, Norway
Paramount Pictures Corporation, Los Angeles, USA
“When the German philosopher and culture critic Walter Benjamin travelled by ship along the coast of northern Norway, he wrote about his impression of the midnight sun: It’s like looking into the storage of eternal days in the warehouse of time.
It was a similar sentiment I felt when I saw Erik Asla’s photographs of sea and sky. It was like looking into the ocean’s warehouse of eternal horizons, I thought. There is something gloriously beautiful about these images. The boundary between the sea and the sky is both motionless and moving, at the same time.”
“No artist can recreate nature, only the experiences it can provide. The magical power in Erik Asla’s photographs makes the spirit in the images hover between them and the audience – a passage to life in the viewer’s chest. It is the magic of art, but also of nature.”