Espen Gleditsch

Espen Gleditsch (b. 1983) works with photography. His projects often take historical events, artworks or architecture as point of departure, where shifts of meaning and misinterpretations have played a decisive role in their dissemination and reception.

In the summer of 2025 the exhibition Espen Gleditsch – Sanatorium Stenersen will be on display at the National Museum – Villa Stenersen. This is the first time the National Museum makes use of Arne Korsmos modernist villa for a solo presentation with a contemporary artist. The exhibition project is developed specifically for the location.

His recent projects includes mmmMarbles (2022), a photographic close reading of the part of the Parthenon sculptures that are in the collection of The British Museum, and how ideals of white antique sculpture paved the way for a destructive and irreversible ‘restoration’ of the invaluable sculptures during the 1930s. In his project On The Whispering Wind (2023), he photographed the plaster casts made from the remains of the inhabitants of Pompeii who were buried under the volcanic ash.

Through the medium of photography, he explores how coincidences, unintentional shifts of meaning and human desire impact how historical narratives are established and disseminated.