Spectrum Line
artist: Lars Strandh
dates: October 7 - October 28, 2023
Statement
The main work in Lars Strandh’s fifth (including one digital during the pandemic) solo show at Zeitgeist is a 12 canvas long spectrum. The colors run from yellow over red, blue and green to yellow, this unlike the natural visual spectrum that spans from violet to red.
The colors have developed since Strandh last showed paintings in his solo show at Zeitgeist in 2014 and they appear brighter but also more complex and divided.
Each and every color looks like a specific chosen color, but it might be truer to describe the colors as “unspecific specific colors”.
There are also some smaller works in white and black shades.
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(It is hard to avoid references to Ellsworth Kelly’s famous Spectrum from 1969.
However, Strandh’s spectrum goes the opposite way as Ellsworth Kelly’s, from yellow to red then blue etc. instead of yellow, green, blue etc.
While Kelly works with specific colors Strandh works with a kind of unspecific specific colors. Where Kelly’s canvases have the same size and are “floating” at the same “wave length” Strandh’s Spectrum has several different sizes and creates a pulse of visual push and pull depending on what color the viewer focus on.)
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“Horizontality, as in my paintings, is an indication of how we want to see the world and create order – we stand up as verticals and see the environment as horizontal. It creates balance.”
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In my paintings the line is both real and abstract, concrete and diffuse.
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As parallel lines on a water surface, thousands of "landscapes" are painted in one and the same painting. Slowness, focus and repetition can also be seen as an existential or political statement in relation to an otherwise logged in society, where quick results and immediate understanding may seem to dominate our values.
In this multi-year project, an exploration for a perceptual recognition or experience is to think from the basics. What reflections or "mindscapes" can be opened up, or is it, in view of the horizontal structure, also an opportunity for a reading of a "landscape" or "seascape"? Essential and central is the time aspect and thoughts about time and endurance. Below, scientific, measurable time versus an experience-based, more fluid time is central. The repetitive work process can be seen as an examination of time in a more existentialist direction or as a political statement in relation to an online society or prevailing art discourse. The many hundreds of strokes that the paintings are developed from, and not least the paintings in an exhibition seen together, stand as proof of an existence and presence, both physically and mentally.
Questions related to the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) about scientific, measurable time versus an experience-based, more fluid, non-linear time can form the basis for further philosophizing and discussions. This can be a paradox or even a contradition since Strandh’s more experience based paintings are bulit up with lines over time.
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“Observed close up, the finely tuned nuances shift according to where one stands, and a shimmering interplay occurs between gloss and matte surfaces. The structure is dependent on patience and strong control, while the thin stripes and the actual colour spectrum itself implies something more fluid and expressive. Like a long and unfinished series, new combinations and formal possibilities evolve, within some fundamental – and potentially productive – limitations on format, surface treatment and use of colour. Individual works are joined together to form diptychs and triptychs in abstract series. A set of factors is already given, but these are continuously shifted. …
A wealth of plausible artistic references can be found in these works; not least, they can be reflexively linked to a concrete or minimalistically understood painting that intentionally distances itself from literary readings and illusionism. You are faced with what you actually see, perceptually, and there are no pointers out of this spatial situation. Yet when experiencing Strandh's paintings, the colours and the horizontal lines act as catalysts for the individual viewer's subjective network of associations: dusk, waves and sun on the retina. The colours carry themselves, but have slits leading out towards a fluid and shifting world.”
Excerpt from the essay “The enduring appeal of colour” written by Line Ulekleiv in the catalogue for the exhibition “Kristin Lindberg – Lars Strandh - as light transforming colours” at Drammen Museum, Norway July 2022.