Malin Persson
02 Jun - 07 Jul 2007
MALIN PERSSON
"The painters window"
Persbericht
Galerie Juliètte proudly presents the opening of the new gallery space on Gerard Doustraat 128 a, right across the street from the old space.
The exhibition entitled ‘The painters window’ by artist Malin Persson (1978, S) will be the first show in this new building, a former car workshop.
Malin Persson’s paintings have recently undergone a subtle transformation. Her investigation into the possibilities of abstraction in landscape painting has led towards experimentation with hard-line geometric shapes. The use of certain modernist tropes, like grids and zips, seems a logical progression from the slow fading of figuration in Persson’s canvases. The artist sometimes literally places a barrier in between the viewer and the landscape, by using abstract lines serving as bars in front of the landscape; in other large scale paintings these bars functioning as barriers that make up the entire composition. The title of the show, ‘The painters window’, could be referring to both the classical notion of the painting as a window on the world, and the painter’s use of the devices that reveal the construction of its illusion.
The city is taking over, bit by bit.
In the more abstract works the role of the light becomes very much apparent. Patches of light and colour form rhythms that divide spaces and pull them together at the same time. Persson paints in colour, but thinks in light. The 19th century art critic John Ruskin would have really appreciated her experiments: ‘the more true we are in colour, the greater, ordinarily, will be the discrepancy felt between the intensity of hue and the feebleness of light. . . . Nevertheless the aim and struggle of the artist must always be to do away with this discrepancy as far as the powers of art admit, not by lowering his colour, but by increasing his light.’
The pure figurative work is not lost though. It can still be found in Persson’s watercolors. ‘This is where I come from.’ Scenes like the Swedish landscape and seemingly innocent girls on the dance floor remind us of her earlier work. But also these scenes are showing hints towards abstraction – a natural urge that has always been present in Persson’s paintings. Details like the designs of dresses and floor patterns are indicators of the new direction taken in Persson’s work.
"The painters window"
Persbericht
Galerie Juliètte proudly presents the opening of the new gallery space on Gerard Doustraat 128 a, right across the street from the old space.
The exhibition entitled ‘The painters window’ by artist Malin Persson (1978, S) will be the first show in this new building, a former car workshop.
Malin Persson’s paintings have recently undergone a subtle transformation. Her investigation into the possibilities of abstraction in landscape painting has led towards experimentation with hard-line geometric shapes. The use of certain modernist tropes, like grids and zips, seems a logical progression from the slow fading of figuration in Persson’s canvases. The artist sometimes literally places a barrier in between the viewer and the landscape, by using abstract lines serving as bars in front of the landscape; in other large scale paintings these bars functioning as barriers that make up the entire composition. The title of the show, ‘The painters window’, could be referring to both the classical notion of the painting as a window on the world, and the painter’s use of the devices that reveal the construction of its illusion.
The city is taking over, bit by bit.
In the more abstract works the role of the light becomes very much apparent. Patches of light and colour form rhythms that divide spaces and pull them together at the same time. Persson paints in colour, but thinks in light. The 19th century art critic John Ruskin would have really appreciated her experiments: ‘the more true we are in colour, the greater, ordinarily, will be the discrepancy felt between the intensity of hue and the feebleness of light. . . . Nevertheless the aim and struggle of the artist must always be to do away with this discrepancy as far as the powers of art admit, not by lowering his colour, but by increasing his light.’
The pure figurative work is not lost though. It can still be found in Persson’s watercolors. ‘This is where I come from.’ Scenes like the Swedish landscape and seemingly innocent girls on the dance floor remind us of her earlier work. But also these scenes are showing hints towards abstraction – a natural urge that has always been present in Persson’s paintings. Details like the designs of dresses and floor patterns are indicators of the new direction taken in Persson’s work.