Press Release: The Summer Exhibition 2006 at Tromsø Art Association features two solo exhibitions by artists working in completely different media and techniques. However, the exhibitions are connected by several common themes. Both are based on the conceptual, exploring the themes of life cycles and circles, with a strong focus on the aesthetic. They also share the adoption of graffiti’s aesthetics and the techniques of tagging.
Hege Liseth works conceptually with painting. Some of her works are standalone paintings, while others are developed as installations that expand beyond the confines of the painting and extend onto walls and ceilings.
Liseth’s paintings are constructed layer upon layer with repetitions, attempts at patterns, and free elaboration in thin, transparent layers of paint. The pictorial elements can become an endless series of figurality that grows beyond the frame, existing both outside and within the work simultaneously, as if we are seeing just a piece of a larger picture, evoking associations of growth or cycles.
Series of works become parts of the same piece, and each individual work relates to one another as parts of a whole. The space and installation become integral to the work.
The painting installation presents itself as a spatial painting that includes the viewer. In this way, Liseth also emphasizes the audience’s active role as spectators. One gets a sense of airiness, almost as if floating among the circles and patterns, in a visual language that evokes a multitude of associations.
The transition between «oil on canvas» and «directly on the wall» represents for Liseth a new way of working with painting, which she wishes to explore further. Contradictory components raise new questions as the constant, fixed, and eternal nature of painting is set against the space-dependent and time-limited painting on the wall.
Liseth often incorporates living plants in her installations. She is interested in the laws of nature and humanity’s inescapable connection to it. At Tromsø Art Association, she plants seeds that will sprout and grow throughout the exhibition period.
Hege Liseth has an artistic background from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London and the National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in Oslo.
The exhibition is supported by the Norwegian Cultural Council.