Hoffmann + Maler + Wallenberg is pleased to announce the exhibition Azuresque by Constance Tenvik, the gallery’s first exhibition with the artist and Tenvik’s first solo exhibition in France. The show will feature a dozen new paintings of various sizes.

Azuresque results from a lengthy stay on the Côte d’Azur, during which the Norwegian artist explored the region’s history, its various towns, and its contemporary everyday. One particular focus centered on the historically important artists who lived in the area: Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, and Jean Cocteau loom as inspirations all over the exhibition.

Another sphere of research was the Côte d’Azur in the 1920s, when Gerald and Sara Murphy’s property on the rocky cliffs of Cap d’Antibes hosted the avant-garde of the so-called Lost Generation. Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker, and Coco Chanel were regulars at the Murphys’ Villa America. The portrait diptych Zelda and Scott features the Fitzgeralds. The After Party at Cap-Eden-Roc depicts a party scene at the famous hotel, which the Murphys took over in the summer of 1923, sparking a new era for the French Riviera as a summer destination. Duncan Disco is an ethereal dance scene inspired by one of Isadora Duncan’s choreographies and Matisse’s various dance-related paintings. Duncan infamously suffocated when her scarf got tangled in the wheel of her cabriolet while driving in Nice in 1927.

Other paintings are less concerned with history and rather depict characters that Tenvik met and encountered during her stay, for instance Meera on a Bubbly Afternoon and Miss Bosski Before Conducting an Interview. The Inner Game is a self-portrait as a tennis player. A Bouquet to Make Me Feel Like Mrs. Dalloway is one of a few still-lifes featuring flower bouquets. To Tenvik’s mind, these paintings capture not only the flora and magnificent light of the Côte d’Azur but also the overpowering and cloying scents—a combination of flowers, citrus trees, and seawater.

Tenvik takes an exuberant approach to painting, seeking the full expressive potential of the medium. Her paintings are marked by an incredible energy and fluidity, highly intense colors, and a unique sense of dynamic detail. Her characters are caricatures—all distortions and exaggerations. Arms, legs, and feet are oversize, and heads, noses, and ears are often immense. Tenvik’s vibrant scenes feel unnatural and bizarre, yet simultaneously dreamlike and magical.

Azuresque will be accompanied by a publication presenting all the works in the show, plus diary entries and sketches Tenvik made during her stay in Nice. Published by HMW Books.

Constance Tenvik (b. 1990, London) currently lives in Oslo. She received her MFA from the Yale School of Art (2016) and her BFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2014). Recent solo exhibitions include Long Reaching Gloves, Loyal, Stockholm (2021), Falling Eye Lashes, ISCA Gallery, Oslo (2020), Artichoke Hearts, 56 Henry, New York (2019), and Voyage Autour de Ma Chambre, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo (2019).