Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: MOOD, EMOTION AND ATMOSPHERE
28.05.09-21.06.09 (Galleri A)
After graduating with a BA degree from Westerdals, Master of Arts School of Oslo and Honor class at Academy of Art University in San Fransisco has Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen established herself as an independent artist with several exhibitions in Norway. In 06, she had her debut in New York where art magazines and the press wrote several credit end art reviews, and her works has fallen in good taste in the USA. In 08 she decorated a SPA in San Diego Califonia. At the previous exhibition in Bærum Kunstforening, she again experienced high demand and most of the works were sold on opening day. "The MOOD, EMOTION AND ATMOSPHERE" is her solodebut in Gallery A.
The work is done with acrylic and palette knife. They are figurative with abstract elements. The figurative and non-figurative construction provides a dynamic that creates a tension between the figure and thought. Their mood is reflected in the abstract brushstrokes going through all the paintings.
There is also an important point that the images will take for a frozen moment. It is the psychological mood in those moments Helgesen want to explore with her works. The message is that these small glimpses of human life, as the work represents, can be valuable and reflect on. At moments are transient is underlined by the use of water in the paint so that one gets a feeling of that time is the flash card. The underlying idea is that the moments or glimpses end also will come and the observants will understand.
"The MOOD, EMOTION AND ATMOSPHERE" can serve as a recognition of the brief moments that represents life, death, love and dreams. Helgesens comment is that some of these glimpses of life will be with the viewer forever a place in mind, while other moments are in the visual memory forgetfulness and will thus never be affected. The desire to visualize glimpses representing "MOOD, EMOTION AND ATMOSPHERE" stems out of a desire to re-create moods that are meaningful for the quality of life.
KRITIKK av
Ed McCormack
GALLERY & STUDIO
217 East 85th Street PMB 228
New York, N.Y. 10028
VISIONS OF FLUX IN THE ART OF MIA GJERDRUM HELGESEN
by Ed McCormack
Previewing the most recent work of the gifted Norwegian artist Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen calls to mind an evocative phrase from the famous Lerner and Loewe musical “Camelot”: “one brief shining moment.” For that is precisely what Helgesen seems to capture in each of the paintings that she will be exhibiting, under the apt title “Mood, Emotion and Atmosphere,” from May 28th through June 21st at Gallery A, in Oslo.
In a review of one of her previous exhibitions in New York City a couple of years ago, one critic invoked Willem de Kooning’s term “slippery glimpses” to describe how Helgesen’s forms seemed to slide back and forth between recognizable imagery and pure abstraction. However, this aesthetic shape-shifting has become even more evocative in recent canvases that amount to visual odes to life’s ineluctable uncertainty and flux.
Indeed, Helgesen’s approach also calls to mind Francis Bacon’s statement that he did not endeavor to capture the actual appearances of things but, rather, “the elusive clusters of emotion those appearances provoke.” Yet unlike that English painter’s grim visions, Helgesen’s paintings are invariably uplifting, even while suggesting complexities of human relationships ranging from the unconditional devotion of maternal love to the fickle vicissitudes of romantic entanglement.
While allusions to landscape and marinescape seemed the most prominent representational elements in earlier compositions, now figurative allusions are more readily discernible. Like a kindred spirit of her illustrious fellow countryman Edvard Munch, albeit with a somewhat sunnier disposition, Helgesen conjures them up with broad areas of shimmering color, which she lays down with bold, Expressionist strokes of the brush or palette knife.
Vibrant reds, blues, and golden yellows that initially command our attention for their sheer visual power ultimately yield visions of youthful couples enacting their intimate dramas; mothers tenderly cradling their offspring; and a mysterious group of spectral souls keeping a vigil on a shore overlooking a luminous body of water, among other compelling subjects.
All are evoked with the gestural vivacity and the chromatic beauty that makes Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen a singularly engaging contemporary painter.
––Ed McCormack
ED McCORMACK, one of the original Contributing Editors of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, has written extensively on art and popular culture for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and numerous other publications. Presently, with his wife, Jeannie McCormack, he publishes the New York art journal, Gallery & Studio.
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| Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: ALWAYS acrylic on canvas 100 x 100 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: BACK acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: LATE (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: YOUTH (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
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| Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: CHILD (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 100 x 100 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: FAMILY acrylic on wooden plate 70 x 70 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: SILENCE (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 100 x 70 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: UNCONDITIONAL LOVE (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
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| Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: TO RETURN (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 150 x 100 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: SUNNY LOVE (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: SUMMER GLIMT (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: STRONGER (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
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| Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: SINKING (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: SENSITIVE (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: SEARCH (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: RELATION (2009) acrilic on linen canvas 200 x 200 |
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| Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: REFLECTION (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 200 x 200 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: OUTSIDE (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 100 x 100 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: ONE STEP (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: ONE PATH acrylic on wood 70 x 70 |
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| Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: MOMENT (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: LOVING (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: LEFT BEHIND acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: LAST DANCE acrylic on linen canvas 150 x 100 |
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| Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: INSIDE (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 100 x 100 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: GONE (2009) acryl on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: FOR YOU (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: DAYLIGHT SISTERS (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
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| Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: ONE OF A KIND (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: BONDING (2009) acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: BEHIND acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: APART acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
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| Mia Gjerdrum Helgesen: ANOTHER STORY acrylic on linen canvas 50 x 50 |
