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JAN WANGGAARD – BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Jan Wanggaard, born in Oslo in 1958, lives in Lofoten/Oslo. In his early twenties Jan became World Champion in windsurfing and was for several years rated among the very best windsurfers in the world winning several International Championships and World Cup regattas, During the same period Jan studied at the University of Sports in Oslo. Jan also developed his own sails and boards in close cooperation with the worlds largest manufacturers of windsurfing equipment. At the peak of his career Jan left the sport and settled in England for 5 years to study Industrial Design.

After this period of studies Jan moved gradually towards an original and personal lifestyle, identified by a rather permanent period of nearly 15 years, based deep in the wild nature of the Arctic Lofoten Islands in the North of Norway. His life has crystalized to become something hard to identify other than viewed through his very own direct way of putting focus and priorities on matters different from known factors like personal recognition or career. Jan’s various works open doors to an existence beyond time, space and ego. There can be seen a clear esthetic priority and deep gratitude and value for totality in all his engagements.

In the recent years Jan’s work has become somewhat more available to the public and during the winter of 2006 he did his first major indoor performance presenting a large number of gigantic sculptures in hand carved in soap, over a period of two months in Milan, Italy. (Light and shadow, with Tamanohada at Zona Tortona and La Triennale di Milano).
His next major presentation was a limited selection of similar sculptures (“Detachments”) at The Museum of Modern Art (Mudam) in Luxembourg, opening in October 2007. During this exhibition he also performed a “live” sculptural session during an “Evening at the museum”.
In 2008 Jan was again invited to Italy to perform a combined Exhibition and Workshop with children at the Segni di Infantia Art and Theatre Festival. This time Jan had put focus on the traditional building material round cobblestones.
In spring 2009 Jan was invited to create an In-gallery workshop in the prestigious Gallery Trafo in Norway combined with a Summer Installation in the main Gallery Hall. Also this time Jan made use of round riverstones.

A documentary film “Panta Rei” focusing on Jan Wanggaard’s life and works, by Norwegian filmmaker Lars was presented at various film festivals, after being shown at Norwegian National Television NRK, Easter 2007. The film follows Jan Wanggaard over a 3-year period, and shows among other things his creation of a scale-model of the solar system placed within an area of nearly 30km in the Lofoten Islands. The film won “Award for Creativity” at the Art-film festival FIFA in Montreal, Canada, March
2007.

Jan Wanggaard has through his whole life been closely linked to nature, and his expressions reflect these bonds. His works are characterized by an intuitive approach and often a long repetitive almost meditative period of realization. Most of Wanggaards works are exercised within nature itself and in essence also put together by the use of natural materials. They vary from being partly functional to pure abstract esthetic expressions. Wanggaards works awake a state of silence, that emptiness which evolve in all of us when time and space dissolve and we are sensing the universal existence beyond identification.