Paintings

Silent Transformations /
The Unusuality of the Ordinary

Anne Vilsbøll focuses on experienced moments. Her paintings in concrete abstract structured forms and colours are poetic expressions that make the experienced something special. The works talk about nature, life and coexistence. The paintings vibrate with pigments on textural surfaces, built from the ground of nature’s plants into sheets that absorb colour like skin – an interplay of material and painting that has been Anne Vilsbøll’s hallmark for four decades.

ROUND LIFE

Predefined positions, choreographed patterns, streams, lakes, seas, reflecting and swallowing, turmoil and calm, metaphysics, open senses, inner worlds, varying levels – life is round, there is hope, expansive, moist landscapes join in with the ocean, resolution , sensuality, receptivity, disappearance into nothingness, the search for the round life, victory over despair, flight and escape scenes –  the mystery, the living space, the invisible are the real domains of art, through art I can regain my freedom, as birds of flight, images of longing, being,  creative, participating in life, vitality, clarity, thought and the power of emotion can blow our physical frames – art is like a human body thrown into water without being able to swim – the body will automatically perform rescue movements – art exists as an instinct which in a spiritual sense do not let man drown. Man’s spiritual instinct manifests itself in the arts

À la recherche du sens de l’existence

What does it mean to exist? How do you exist? Do you have a reason?
In the film At Eternity’s Gate/created by Julian Scnabel, the actor Willem Dafoe, playing Vincent van Gogh, says: Existence cannot be without a reason.
Whether Vincent van Gogh actually expressed this sentence or not – it strikes a chord in me. Existence has to do with being alive – with being.

Since the early seventies the French philosopher Henri Bergson’s theories on duration, a theory on consciousness and time, understood as free will, pure mobility, has been my guide line. Duration can only be grasped through intuition, getting back to the things themselves and experience without our habitual, utilitarian thinking. Inner duration cannot be divided. It is in possession of quality and not just quantifiable. Unlike every second of time, units of time, duration never meets two moments the same in its unfolding succession. Our power of intuition is our most powerful source for obtaining true knowledge. Even though life is meant to be lived and maybe never quite known, the existential moments of duration experiencing intuition is what guides my work in an attempt to express the grasp of a moment, which will never be the same anymore in its unfolding succession. To me existence finds a reason in the creating act, where I experience duration.

The Danish artist Anne Vilsboell’s exhibition at Galeri Beddington in the summer of 2019 shows selected painted moments that the artist wishes to communicate with the viewer.

Along the walls – in the interval

Along the Walls – in the interval is a fascination of the organic and artistic Dogon community, which under historical pressure created defensive positions;  the relationship between the subject and the world and the influence a country’s culture has on the observer’s experiences.

“As a 27 year old I studied Visual Communication. We were given the task of choosing a space we wanted to work with. I chose interval. In the work process that followed, I studied organic architecture and described a.o. the settlements of the Dogon people in the rocky mountain territory of the West African state of Mali. Their settlements were built between the sandy cliffs of the Bandiagara massif in an impassable terrain.

The Dogon migration in this region had a historical justification: The Dogon people were forced to seek remote settlements from around 1400 AD because they refused to convert to Islam.
They constructed vertical mud brick structures stacked on the impermeable rock surfaces, so the architecture almost disappeared in the space. The settlements and individual houses reflect the human body. Their masks express universal vitality, and their tree-lined ladders are created for spirits so that these can climb to the roof terrace’s altar.

Migration always has and still has historical reasons. Where and how can people settle in association with nature today?”

Geographical colours – geografiske farver

In her work at the present exhibition at Gallery Roedhusgaarden Anne Vilsboell is focusing on which influence a country’s culture has on the experience of the viewer, the relationship between subject and the world, a recurrent theme in her artistic praxis since many years. In beginning of the 80’es Anne Vilsboell wrote: The surroundings have colours, the colours of the animals are the colours of the surroundings, the animals protect themselves with the colours of the surroundings, human beings do the same. Every geographical place creates its own socio-cultural contexts in its use of colour according to its geology, climate and light. When we live in the middle of our own cultures’ colours, we do not often notice these, because they are natural part of ourselves – they are ourselves. When a culture is new to oneself, one sees the colours. Colours change, move and live defining the identity of a place. The exhibition Geographical colours – geografiske farver contain two geographical places – two localities, France and Mexico, where the handmade paper has absorbed the colours of the surroundings. The work expresses at the same time a dreamlike being, which is described best as follows: In seven small novels published between 1950 – 56 the author C.S. Lewis writes about the place Narnia. A world visited at special occasions by selected children. On arrives to this country through a back door in a wardrobe on the attic. Through the door one steps out into a very quiet forest, filled with ponds. If one jumps into a pond with a yellow ring, one experiences the strangest things. The girl Polly asks Diggy, whether the forest is one of the worlds one can travel to and Diggy answers: No, I do not think this forest is a world at all. I think it is just a kind of place in between. The forest is a place, which is not part of any of the worlds, but it gives you access to many worlds. This is why there is so dreamlike in the forest in between. To be able to jump into the yellow pond in the forest in between and to able to travel to other worlds have been a constant in Anne Vilsboell’s life. It is there, she sees and absorbs colours.

Tetris

TETRIS is a puzzle, video game, where all the pieces of the game contain 4 segments. The word tetris is derived from the Greek numerical prefix tetra, meaning creating elements of tettares/tessares = four.

For more than 30 years, Anne Vilsbøll has built the foundation for her paintings of handmade paper, made in squares and rectangles, which, by virtue of cellulose, “bind” into large areas.

This exhibition focuses on the square – the squares of the underlying base and the intersection of the overlying squares with the foundation. The foundation of invisible fibers is induced in color to create a haptically bright presence, a haptic geology of fibers and color.

The inspiration for Anne Vilsboell’s paintings is a reflexion on the life of lithography – to draw inverted details on limestone, where after these drawings are cleaned, washed out, flushed and rolled in, before the drawing meets the paper.

The Light Palette

The current exhibition, The Light Palette, shows Anne Vilsbøll’s latest work in which light, colour and the underlying handmade sheets give the paintings a floating, dreamy, tactile presence, one cannot really find the words to express.

The light is refracted in the surface of the painting and becomes textural in a bright uplifting colour presence, in which one can breathe. They are paintings transcending borders in their own silent way.

Elsewhere

Being somewhere else, being in foreign lands outside one’s own country, not being present there – where you come from, but far away, is the starting point for Anne Vilsbøll’s new works, which will be exhibited at Galleri Rødhusgården from 9th September. 2016. It is not just about physical absence, but about coexistence of nothingness and generosity, the meaningless and meaningful, emptiness and abundance, nature and man-made, combinations of occasional incompatible elements, where the flow of thoughts, words and impressions are captured in the space of the paintings and leave associations open to multiple and layered interpretations. In December 2015, Anne Vilsbøll stayed at a place in India named Elsewhere. This place and it’s surroundings gave this exhibition its title. Anne Vilsbøll’s approach to art is based on a deep interest in internal waves in the foundation and the sign in visual communication. For her foundation and sign have equal importance in the final work, which more than three decades ago, led her to handmade paper, its history and formal characteristics as a means of artistic expression. Her works are created through continuous studies that lead to a personal expression in constant development – a work that is visually harmonious and perceptual with tactile and contextual aspects. The action lines she follows cannot be categorized under one or more direction. A traveller in the world constantly influenced by new surroundings, knowledge of the long art history of the West and the East, with studios in France and India, she absorbs her surroundings as paper absorbs colour. All her works have an intrinsic meaning that brings the attentive viewer into and beyond the actual space of painting. To process all her surfaces into works she experiences as a digestive process from deconstruction to construction; the internal waves in the space of the paper as an invisible text, a collision of unknown territories, a secret language which she uses to engage in the woven structure of which the world is constructed. No two sheets of paper are the same. This has an influence on her art. Extracts, underlying layers, what is left when you have seen and not just looked, are drawn in the final expression moving in the interval between what was and what remains within us in an attempt to bring us back to a common consciousness.

Colour – from my Butterfly Collection

Colour and paper are where the brain and the universe meet.
Colour is like breathing.

From Surface to Air

Paper as an interval between earth and sky – a surface created from nature – a possibility to create a new world

Idol

“They catch clay in the river – they pour clay on straw mats – they form figures of straw. Layers of clay and straw are laid around the straw model. One  person modifies fingers in clay – another one faces and yet another one bodies. The bodies are assembled into human or animal like sculptures. A fourth person paints the figures in strong colors after the sculptures have been dried in the sun. The figures are not burned. Wherever you go and turn around, everyone is creating up to 3 m high clay figures that pile up in the small alleys. They fabricate idols for customers all over the world. The idols are carried in procession and thrown into the river as sacrifices to the goddess Durga. Each year the process is repeated – a continuous circle of construction and deconstruction-  an act of worship that is replaced by another one the next year. A religious ceremony that reflects man’s urge to worship, to hope and to have somebody to look up to. The process is not far from the 21st century’s worship of stars – the star is very quickly replaced by another. ”(Excerpt from Anne Vilsboell diary India, March 2012) Anne Vilsboell’s new paintings are inspired by her visit to Kolkata’s clay quarter – Kumar Tuli – where approx.150 families work with idols. The area originally grew out of 3 small villages in 1690, to which people emigrated. They live today in Sutanooti in the north of Kolkata.  p Vilsboell’s  paintings, in strong red, blue, yellow and orange colours,  appear as assembled fragments in abstract compositions. In the compositions, one is aware of constructs which, under consideration, change over and over again to become yet other form. Shapes that speak in a metaphysical language in constant change.

Imaginal Cells

Everything we see is in constant motion. Nothing is permanent – biologically we are a stream of cells.
Biologists have observed that imaginary cells are formed in a butterfly larva. The cells gradually organize themselves into the larva and create a completely new and different organism on the basis of the material from which the larva was originally formed. The larva’s original cells attempt to attack the imaginary cells they experience as enemies. But the imaginary cells grow more and more numerous to eventually form the anatomical cells of the butterfly.
Being one of the first imaginary cells can be a painful experience. They risk being eaten up. Because they have the ability to connect with other imaginary cells, they become more and more and therefore impossible to kill.
Mankind can do exactly the same as the imaginary cells in the butterfly larva: get wings and be able to fly and inspire others!
Working  with handmade paper as an artistic means of expression is a work containing the connection of cells and the ability to absorb in order to create a new vibrant tactility.

The Oxide World

Creating paper is a circular act. Anne Vilsboell’s new work we experience precisely the circular shape as the predominant, where structure, format, the interrelationship of the inner forms, generated by the outer in vibrating strong colours. The new work focuses on the relationship between the invisible and the visible, the materiality, volume, shape and colour of the painting with tactile quality. Anne Vilsboell’s art requires immersion and observance of details. The rhythm of lines and depth, glow of the colours, blue in blue, yellow in yellow…. Not only does Vilsboell produce her own paper for each painting, but she also mixes her own pigments, including oxides and ultramarine – she paints until the painting is just right! The work contains a silence that originates from a mind that rests in itself. Aura-like paintings that have an effect on the observer who takes time to see. If you observe, you will feel colour.

Shape Shifting

Anne Vilsbøll’s adaptation of the bull motif, which balances on the border between figuration and abstraction, portrays the bull’s dual fate as an object of worship in the East and entertainment object in the West.

She creates the paper for her paintings, which adds to them a particularly coarse, vibrant structure. Her intense work with paper is rooted in the belief that what the artist paints on  is as important as what is painted. The saturated colour fields, in combination with the texture of the paper, give her work a special rhythmic variation, which seems to detach the partially abstract motifs from their canvases and let them do their own work in space.

The Epiphytic Lichen Series

The word epiphytic: from Graesk: epi: on / phyton: plant

The Epiphytic Lichen Series, with its title and subject, refers to epiphytic lichen, which has no roots but can grow where no other plants grow. The fungus is not a parasite. Fungus and algae form a common growth in the form of corals that have incorporated photosynthetic algae into their bodies and reduce CO2 to sugar to the benefit of both organisms. It is a symbiosis, where the symbians get water and minerals from rain, tar and dust. The fungus has a larger catch area than the algae itself and protects the algae by keeping on the water. Mutualistic symbiosis plays a major role in ecology and is vital for ecosystems. 48% of land plants depend on mycorrhizal conditions with fungi to be provided with inorganic components.

Epiphytic layer is incorporated partly as a component of the actual surface of the paintings themselves, as well as a compositional element in itself. Thus, it is a direct expression of symbiosis, since the surface of painting is handmade paper sheets containing geographical, biological and aesthetic aspects. Layers, fibers and water have an influence on the final character of the painting, which relates to what a symbiosis contains. Pigments, photos and pyrogravure form part of a dialogue with the basic substance of the painting, and the final expression appears as a conceptual statement about mutualistic symbiosis.