Magne Furuholmen

Magne Furuholmen is a singular creative force whose career spans the worlds of contemporary art and global pop culture. Best known internationally as a founding member and keyboardist of the legendary band A-ha, Furuholmen has simultaneously forged a critically acclaimed path as a visual artist. His practice—encompassing painting, printmaking, sculpture, glasswork, and ceramics—has been exhibited in museums and institutions around the world. Furuholmen’s work is deeply personal, frequently merging lyrical abstraction with spiritual and cultural iconography. The artist’s sensibilities are shaped by a lifelong engagement with music, language, loss, and a reverence for legacy—particularly that of his father, a professional jazz musician who passed away in a tragic plane crash when Magne was only six years old. This dual inheritance of sound and silence, rhythm and reflection, runs through every composition.

The 49 monotypes in this new suite, Esper Lucat, are born of meditation, memory, and mastery. These works began as a response to Furuholmen’s pandemic-era reflection on La Chapelle du Rosaire—Henri Matisse’s final and arguably most profound work. Furuholmen, long familiar with the chapel near Vence, France, drew inspiration from Matisse’s designs for ecclesiastical vestments. The title, Esper Lucat, is taken from the Latin inscription on Matisse’s black chasuble and translates to Hope and Light. The series is both homage and evolution. Furuholmen’s original seven woodcuts—titled Esper Lucat (Mourlot Edition)—echo Matisse’s bold liturgical forms and sacred color palettes, yet they are infused with a distinctly modern rhythm. These motifs, grounded in spiritual tradition, are reinterpreted through Furuholmen’s improvisational, almost jazz-like approach to composition. The Deluxe Edition, comprising 49 unique monotypes, emerges from those original plates, each print undergoing seven color and structural transformations. The result is a vibrant suite of singular works where repetition gives way to revelation—each variation like a jazz riff peeling back a different emotional truth.