Stay away

For Olaf Storø, the polar bear portrait is perhaps a kind of self-portrait of an artist based in Longyearbyen who is tired of tourists coming up here by plane and cruise ship in search of various experiences and heading out into the terrain by snowmobile, quad bike or boat – and that this is called sustainable tourism. What are the animal perspectives of these issues? What is the polar bear thinking? 

This exhibition presents Olaf Storø as a graphic artist and enables us to take a closer look at the artistic process. Lithography is a graphic technique for printing images. Olaf Storø (b. 1953 in Levanger) visited Svalbard for the first time in 1989 and stayed in an artist’s cabin in Ny-Ålesund. He later moved here and has worked as a painter and lithographer at his studio in Longyearbyen – the world’s northernmost lithography workshop – for more than 20 years.