Michael Næss

Michael Næss (b. 1984, Stavanger, Norway) is a Norwegian artist of Romani Traveller heritage whose work probes the fragile boundaries between the animate and inanimate, the interior and exterior, and the shifting nature of connection. His ongoing series Light On questions what it means for something to be alive—or to appear so—when familiar human structures of relation fall away.

Næss’s practice moves within states of near-recognition and estrangement, exploring perception, distance, and the quiet tension that exists in between. In 2025, his work was shown at Gallery Rusha (Los Angeles) and the Kanvas Festival (Stavanger, Norway). He studied visual art at Nansenskolen and later specialized in painting at the Nordic Institute for Stage and Studio.