Oblique Lattice
2022 ongoing
These paintings are a constructive exploration of liquid colour and the dynamic of ascending and descending diagonal lines in interlocking grids. Using a limited palette of one to two colours and the natural force of gravity as an implement of painting invites unpredictable painterly incident. The paint runs, vertical stripes, beads and bleeds of colour occur. Flow marks of blooms, plumes and tears appear. A form of performative materiality takes place.
Atlas
2020. Acrylic paint on linen canvas, 195 x 150 cm each.
A simple grid structure contains, directs and defines successive washes of diluted paint. The painting process draws on gravity to make vertical, linear traces of running paint. Each painting is a concentrate of one colour.
Fringe
Imbiß
2016–2018. Two series of paintings. Acrylic paint on polyester canvas, 150 x 150 cm each.
Painting is a physical and material passage in time. Horizontal rows of repeated marks are rapidly sponged across the canvas. Quick notations of abstract utterances run from left to right. A fast pace of immediate action. Ready movement in paint and colour. Fleeting bites of time.
Länk
Mosaic murals for Stockholm Odenplan Station, Stockholm City Line.
Public Commission: SL Storstockholms Lokaltrafik. Inauguration July 2017.
Two walls: 250 x 1625 cm and 250 x 2090 cm
Located in a central connecting area of the vast underground surroundings of the Odenplan station, the work examines and celebrates movement through urban spaces. The colourful chain-motif represents connection, sequence, and succession of events.
I have a vivid childhood memory of colouring strips of paper with wax crayons to make decorative paper chains. When hanging they activated and dramatically changed the space. A combination of this memory with questions about the function of ornament was the starting point for this commission.
In moving through public space, with its rush and push and moments of solitude and detachment, the physical impact of scale and colour shapes our behaviour and response. The large mosaics function as a visual symbol and physical marker that facilitate recognition and orientation in the underground passages. Movement through the space activates changing perspectives of the detailed mosaic surfaces.
Chains and Garlands
2011–2014
Painting - canvas objects - installation
Intrigued by how the aesthetic device of ornament can trigger such powerfully contrasting responses as delight and antagonism, I started to rework images of decorative paraphernalia such as garlands, chains, ribbons, frills, and fringes.
The works combine formal and material restraint with notions of excess and celebration. Painted monochrome canvases are folded and unfolded or cut into strips to make garland objects of canvas chains.
Achilles
2010,c-print, 100 x 120 cm
A modest gravestone simply inscribed with the name Achilles.
Mind How You Go
2010,c-print, 100 x 120 cm
Folly
2006–2008
This body of work includes two installations, Trouble in Utopia and Fearful Symmetry, and a series of seven paintings entitled Pearl. The sound of a lone blackbird accompanied the exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2008).
A folly is a building that to a great extent functions as ornament. The best follies are wonderfully mad and eccentric constructions. As monuments to affluence and excess they seem to represent both function and dysfunction in society.
As a source for this project I investigated the ideas, language, and narratives of "The Fold", a concept connected to baroque art, architecture and metaphysics that poetically imagines the world in terms of infinite folds of movement, time and space. Leibniz, the baroque philosopher and polymath, viewed the world as "a body of infinite folds that weave through compressed time and space".
Trouble in Utopia is a horizontal expanse of stacked colour that draws attention to the floor, the ground we stand on, and the spaces we move through. The wood components of each stack are unfixed. It is a fragile construction open to change and at risk of collapse. This work is a continuation of the earlier Lattice and Tartan works from 1997–2001.
The installation Fearful Symmetry is comprised of ten paintings and a constellation of five linear floor structures (Small Walls Gold). The ten silver coloured paintings each contain a symmetrical, organic figure. The figures originate from large paint blots that echo and enlarge the making of simple ink blots. The gold painted wood components that are stacked unfixed directly on the floor suggest boundary lines. They define new spaces, creating a different and temporary order and movement in the space. During the exhibition the Small Walls get interrupted or disturbed by unsuspecting visitors. Some people react by carefully rebuilding, others move swiftly on and away.
The symmetrical images of the Pearl paintings are also derived from large paint blots. They suggest and refer to the history and imagery of Rorschach ink blots. The making of the paint blots basically requires actions of folding and unfolding to create unexpected images and subjective associations. The blots appear as random shapes, as open and vacant images that await responses of association and reference. A pearl begins as a response to an irritant.
Pure and Promiscuous
2001–2005
Photography is an accessible and suggestive medium that encourages construction, exaggeration and distortion. Working with photography is an extension of my work with painting, sculpture and installation. I wanted to take a closer look at issues of nature and narration connected to aspects of gender and vanity. As paradox and paradigm Pure and Promiscuous is an active condition of mutable circumstance that is open to changing perspectives and unpredictable outcomes.
I am Nature
2001, series of 8 c-prints, 84 x 69 cm each
The title refers to Jackson Pollock's famous response to the question ‘Why don’t you paint nature?’
I was thinking about how we can identify with nature as a physical body, the impulse of attributing nature with human sensitivity and emotion. A recognition of the interrelation of human and nature.
These images of trees intertwined with fences were taken in central Oslo.
Close
2002–2004, series of 10 pairs, c-print, 100 x 83 cm (x 2)
Paradoxical phrases such as ‘pointedly foolish’, ‘seriously funny’, ‘bitter sweet’ and ‘pretty ugly', provided a starting
point for this series of paired photographs.The word ‘close’ changes due to context, intonation and pronunciation. Shifting meaning from the near and connected into an enclosed place or a stifling atmosphere. 'Close' can imply similarity or a sense of intensity.
The paired photographs invite considerations of reception, of sequence and comparison.
A collection of 'strangely familiar' episodes, obscure narratives and intimate observations.
A matter of being close, not closed.
Impression
2003, series of 6 c-prints, 89 x 70 cm each
Stripped down and making a spectacle of myself, I address aspects of perception, body and gender.
The series titled Impression refers to the body as medium and material for aesthetic creation and site for experience and contemplation. Skin as a border between self and the world. A notion of art practice as a ‘second skin’ that absorbs and protects. What is only skin deep and what gets under your skin?
Lattice and Tartan
1997–2001
Painting - three-dimensional constructions - installation
Imagine Piet Mondrian dancing boogie-woogie in a kilt.
In this body of work, the horizontal and vertical directions of the grid meet textile connotations and questions of clan identity. Scottish tartans are vibrant grid patterns traditionally woven as a woollen cloth, each clan with their own colours, pattern and motto. The geometric framework of the grid is a basic formal device that became an emblem, heroic motto and leitmotif of modernism. Weaving and stacking are foundations of construction. Diverting the modernist grid by referring to aspects of textile history suggests a more flexible and inclusive scope of influence, context, and interpretation.
Ridå
1997–1998
Textile work as stage curtain for the main auditorium of Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Public commission: Statens Konstråd, Stockholm
Cotton velvet, 4,6 x 17 m
Velvet is a textile that is often used for stage curtains. I was interested in the interplay of the alternating qualities of the velvet fabric seen as contrasts of the visible and the hidden, of onstage and backstage. The shiny reflective thick pile of the front side and the contrasting matt obverse side. The ordinarily reverse and hidden surface of the velvet material has been given a prominent position. This 'other side' of the moss green velvet is exposed as two asymmetrically placed, pale green vertical stripes. The repeated vertical stripes of the monochrome textile have the same width as the surrounding wooden panelling of the auditorium interior.
Containers
1994–1995
Installation
After the dense symbolism of the Major Arcana, I was interested in colour as a lighter, purer substance, unnamed other than as content. The interior of each Container consists of different combinations of monochrome planes. The reflected colour from these painted surfaces creates illusory and luminous spaces. A vertical opening in each Container controls physical access. The more open the Container is to physical entry the fainter the interior colour becomes. The most closed Container gives a dark and black impression. The remaining four Containers give impressions of glowing red, fluorescent green, blushing rose, and evaporating pink.
22 Paintings
1991–1992
Twenty-two paintings, oil on canvas, 192 x 82 cm each
I laughed at the humorous yet derisive interpretation of the abstract-geometric image being a 'sleeping man with large sombrero' (two concentric circles: a small circle within a much larger). The friction between the abstract and the representational, the self-referential and the symbolic-narrative called for closer inspection.
The symbols and allegories of the Tarot present a curious and compelling mix of the popular and the obscure.
The twenty-two trump cards and Major Arcana of the Tarot, numbered 0 – 21, can be interpreted as a pictorial procession of life’s significant events. Used for fortune telling, the Tarot is connected to occult divination and esoteric traditions such as the Kabbalah and numerology.
In my version of the Major Arcana I tried to achieve balance between contrasting principles and conflicting dogma.
My intention was to combine a formal, minimalist vocabulary with vivid colour, quasi-figurative elements and highly symbolical, metaphorical titles.