IntoThe Woods 9

Urban and Rural Disturbances

This week we proudly announce two new and interesting artists, Anita Tjemsland and Gry Hege Rinaldo (see also the blogpost about Rinaldo). Both the 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.

Anita Tjemsland´s pictures are based on what she observe and sense in her surroundings. Tjemsland always find her motives outdoor, beyond her comfort zone. In the threatening, indifferent nature and the cacophony of man-made chaos in a town, she seeks to find an emotional impression. She does not strive for an objective, scientific or naturalistic reproduction of the world, but seeks to express an experienced world, as it appears filtered through her subjective experience. An emotional impression, a profound representation of the architecture of existence; its beauty, cruelty, arbitrariness, conscientiousness, durability and perishable fluidity, its sadness.

By removing everything that is non-essential for the picture, and thus giving the viewer room and freedom to interpret, she obtains a space where she can cultivate the emotional relationship of the first impression given by her motives. This process results in an image Tjemsland considers “a frozen truth”, a floor plan of a particular place at a certain time. Still, the poetic aspect of the picture constitutes a process that continues as long as the image is looked upon or recalled.

Tjemsland most often works in black and white. In her printings she uses plexiglass plates processed with soldering iron as bases. The process is time-consuming and demanding: The plates are processed by hand, to give an organic, vibrant expression. After ingraving the motive on the pressure plates, and applying ink, she gently removes some of the ink in order to give each pressure plate small individual variations of black before printing. View works by Tjemsland in our gallery