Welcome to Oslo Culture Night at Oslo Kunstforening on Friday 12 September – we’ll be open in the evening from 17–22.

The Sign of Four is a solo exhibition by Marius Engh – one of Norway’s leading contemporary artists. With a practice spanning over two decades, he has distinguished himself with works that investigate connections between history, archaeology, philosophy, and the cultural landscape of our time. Engh works across a wide range of media – from sculpture and installation to photography, text, printmaking, and publications. Through a conceptually and visually precise formal language, he holds up a mirror to the present in which the past is reflected, casting shadows and inviting a curious engagement from the viewer. Drawing on thorough research and fieldwork, he activates historical materials and symbols, allowing them to emerge in new contexts.

The exhibition The Sign of Four was developed following a research residency in Athens, where Marius Engh examined the relationship between sculpture and landscape, with particular focus on the origins of the pedestal and the portrait bust in the so-called herm sculpture. A herm is an abstract sculptural form rooted in ancient Greece, originally associated with the god Hermes – protector of travelers and commerce. The form evolved from a simple stone marker into a rectangular pillar topped with a portrait bust. In antiquity, herms served both as altars and as markers in the landscape, placed at borders, crossroads, marketplaces, and sacred sites. Over time, not only Hermes himself but also people associated with his attributes were honored through portraiture – a tradition that can be seen as an extension of the herm sculpture.

In The Sign of Four, Engh draws lines between ancient ideas of borders and movement, symbolic language and systems of value, examining how these – from oracular prophecy to the notion of universal balance – continue to echo in, and challenge, our present day.