Cover

Morten Juvet's (N) project COVER consists of 45 paintings, all in the same square format - as an record cover. Motivationally, the rabbit constitutes the common, ambiguous metaphor, and all paintings refer to the texts of rock music, where this particular vulnerable, but free animal recur. The artist combines visual parts from the original record covers with his own rabbit language. The project points to a connection across music genres.

With the rabbit as a common focal point, Morten Juvet improvises and creates new expressions from the elements he has brought from the standard tunes and the visuality that characterizes the Anglo-American culture he grew up with. Specifically, his own record collection was the first inspiration, and a systematic review has showed that astonishingly many musicians have sung about the rabbit: Elvis (hound dog), Jefferson Airplane (white rabbit) Pink Floyd (breath), Gnags (wild rabbits), etc.

“Morten Juvet shows us an alternative world where intellect and reason are not prevailing, but where the animal in us is given space and space for expression. We have the opportunity to reflect on our own existence here and now. Is there something we have lost along the way to all our wealth and reason-based thinking?
Morten Juvet's paintings depict a surrealistic world that we must look at as meditative images that give our perception of reality a kick. Of course, we all know that the fox is a lurifax, and without claiming that Juvet takes a stand for or against wild animals in our fauna, it is not difficult to read that his relationship with animals is very present in his visual art ... Be it birds of all kinds and deer, these occur most often in the Nordic birch forest and with a color palette that shows us a true romantic in a surrealistic visual world. " (Per Rune Hansebråten in the catalog "View from the forest edge", translated from the Norwegian Art Center Silkeborg Bad)

Morten Juvet identifies several themes in rabbit use, especially these five: Run rabbit run, Alice in Wonderland, rural idyll with cat and rabbits, the rabbit as a symbol of innocence and finally the rabbit as an element of turmoil. His paintings are individually 'heraldically constructed', ie. the artists have set a number of demands or obstructions for themselves in relation to the design, for example the format itself, the use of lyric sentences, as well as picture elements such as oak leaves and Amanita.

That the paintings are new interpretations is evidenced by the joint title COVER, which both denotes the LPs cardboard sleeves and the recording of a known song again in a personal form. But in Juvet's paintings, something more happens than in an ordinary cover version; it is more reminiscent of variations and improvisations as you know it from newer parts of jazz music, where the new interpretation may be farther from the standard than is common to pop music.

COVER consists of a series of slightly more than 40 paintings, created from 2010 until today.