Galleri Trine

(This article only excist in Norwegian)

Article printed in the regional newspaper Sunnmørsposten after the opening of Promised Land 20.November 2010.

(This article only excists in Norwegian)

At first glance one can see Trine Røssevolds series of 16 paintings, as faces with open mouths against a closes to monochrome background. The 16 pictures are different in colours and in the mimics of the various faces. The faces carry such a strong expressions, that it borders on caricature. Even though the pictures are made with great technical abillity, they do not represent a visible reality. The figures are twisted like in a manerist painting by El Greco, or in a painting like Parmigianinos Madonnan with the long neck (1535). The question is if art is able to pull the "Maya-vail" aside and be more real than reality?

Apparently the title of this work, "The Silent Choir", reveals a paradox. There is no doubt that we are looking at a choire of multiple voices. The surrealist René Magritte was adressing a similar question concerning the boundaries of the painting. He did this in the painting showing a realisticly painted pipe and the writing "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" - "This is not a pipe". The painting is not a real pipe, but a picture of the representation of a real object, called a pipe.

Can a painting make sound, like in music? Or, can it show movement, like in a dance? Some might state that painting must only be the paining. That it should not cross the borders to other art-forms, and that the pivot of modern art is in the fragmentation itself. Others will claim that the fascination of the painting is in it´s borderline. Trine Røssevold has also made this point by refering to herself as a "visual poet", rather than an artist. In "The Silent Choir" Røssevold makes a visual expression for sound through facial expressions and colour.

Connection between art-forms has been documented through the phenomenon called synesthesia (the stimulation of a sense triggers experiences in a different field of sense). The composer Alexander Skrjabin(1872-1915) is known for "hearing" colours. To illustrate this he wanted the performance of his tonal-poem "Prometeus"(1908-10) to be accompanied by tinted light projected onto a screen.
In order to put this into system, he gave each tone a specific colour. For example "E" had the colour pearly white. Another example of this is the painter Wassily Kandinsky. During the performance of a Wanger piece in Moscow, Kandinsky "saw" colours. Kandinsky gave his sketches and pictures titles like "Improvisation nr 30, and "Composition VII". These are terms from the music-field. It might be the musics direct expression, and its liberation from commentary, that has made so many artists preoccupied with the idea of the "total work of art", "Das Gesamtkustwerk. Which is the art-fields internal reconciliation.

Song as a subject matter is relatively un-explored within the art of painting. Some of the most known images picturing singing are paintings of the Madonna surrounded by idealised cherubs. In realist baroque paintings, like "Hurdy-gurdy player" by George de la Tour, we find a different and much more tormented visualization of song. While Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings of the singer "Yvette Guilbert"(1894) and the café-singer "Emilie Bouchard in Polaire"(1895) presents a caricature of the song. The French expressionist Henri Matisse has in his paintings "Dance"(1910), and "Music"(1910) shown song as something concerning the origin of man. The painter Odd Nerdrum has also explored music in his mythichal universe. Examples of this is the drawing "Two story-tellers"(1989) and the painting "A story-singer"(1990). In his painting "Singers"(1987-88) we can see three singers also repeating each others dance-like movements. Perhaps the most known "sound-picture" is "Scream"(1893) by Munch. In this work the source of the sound is not the human figure but the surrounding nature. This is visualized by strong colours and swaying forms. The whole painting is screaming.

By her expressive faces and resilient colours, Trine Røssevold utilises strong artistic means. She says that the colours comes "naturally" as a complementation of the paintings expression. In the painterly execution one can see a more refined treatment. In contrary to the more "classical" expressioninsts, who often smeared the paint onto the canvas using bold and greasy strokes, Røssevolds paintings are built up by thin layers of paint. A simmilar, more low-key expressionism, one can find in the paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck. During the period 1912 to 1946 she painted a number of almost transparent self-portraits. An example of this is "Self-portrait with black mouth"(1939).

Trine Røssevold's paintings should be seen as a series. The relations between the painted people is the most important of the piece. In the history of art we can see examples of this kind of "relation-pictures". It is logical to mention the symbolist painter Ferdinand Khnopff's painting "Tennis players"(1889) in this context. There is a very strange atmosphere in this painting of seven figures close together, yet completely isolated. In the world of sculpture Alberto Giacometti has made several images of isolated figures in vast landscapes. In these pieces the spaces between the figures are as important as the figures.

The expressive pictures of Trine Røssevold might appear subjective. Yet "The Silent Choir" deals with an universal theme: Freedom of speech. This becomes apparent when interacting with the art-piece. All though the different components of the work will always be the same, it's emotional tension will vary according to the juxtaposition of the figures. Some might become friends, others will compete. A placement might enhace the individual qualities. A different one will turn them into a unity. The ethernal questions become: Who are we? What is the role of the individual and how does it shape us as human beeings?

David Aasen Sandved, art historian