This week we proudly announce two new and interesting artists, Gry Hege Rinaldo and Anita Tjemsland (see also the blogpost about Tjemsland). Both artists are fascinated by the psychological aspect of nature, but although they at first glance may have a preferred motive in common, the likeness ends there.
Gry Hege Rinaldo is known for her outstanding skills of drawing and painting, often of people in vulnerable situations, pictured so closely it feels almost invading. Her pictures also reveals the artist’s mastery of perspective, and her subtitle knowledge of how to sculpture anatomy. In her later works Rinaldo has changed her motifs from the human body to forests, thus transferring her interest in the human psychology to the animated nature.
Her new motives derive from forests and nature, but their underlying theme are still rooted in psychology. In these new works, Rinaldo wishes to bring about an underlying, almost unnoticeable state of someting frightening, someting insecure and “invalid”.
The idea is inspired by Sigmund Freud’s theories of “Das Unheimlichen”. Rinaldo is looking for ways to express this in her drawings, this very unclear and hard to define feeling and mood. She continues to chase, and has several ideas she may investigate with the forest and nature as backdrop.
Rinaldo works with photographs taken by herself, as a starting point. The photos she has used up till now is taken in the Bavarian forests in Germany.
The term “unheimlich” is not easily translated into a specific English word. However, “unheimlich” relates to an entire spectrum of terms, such as scary, unrecognizable, unsafe, general discomfort, something dark, a sense of feeling that something terrible is about to happen.
“Unheimlich” also relates to situations where there are recognizable elements or feelings, mixed with elements or sensations of something that “sticks” out. Something that does not belong among the recognizable. The term “unheimlich” may relate to a feeling of Deja Vu. That´s why Rinaldo works with drawings of forests. Because the forest, for her, holds an infinity of elements in its chaotic presence. She will, as a consequense, in her drawings include something unrecognizable, something strange. It may be an object, a shape, a color, a shadow that differs from the norm. Something that lies in the shadows, hidden or forgotten. An elements that can not be comprehended as something understandable and meaningful.
Rinaldo wants to induce discomfort.
Discomfort in nature.
