Exploring the possibilities which reside in a given material and capturing its untapped potential is a common thread in Katrine Giæver’s practice, and in the exhibition Wrapping Yellow, Blue and Black she continues her longstanding modus operandi of bypassing traditional approaches to making paintings. In recent years, the range of materials, both as a binder for pigment and supports for application of paints, comprise industrial lacquers and aluminum, acrylic fillers and facade cladding panels, coarse mats of jute, wax and plywood panels. And the methods of applying color have been equally varied; spraying, pouring, sparkling, dipping and scraping are prominent, while traces of the hand, as manifested in brushstrokes, are absent.
In her last exhibition with the gallery, Collecting Colors – Catch and Release in 2021, the ancient technique of mixing pigments in beeswax, poured on birch and poplar panels, was the main theme. These works are developed further in Wrapping Yellow, Blue and Black, with a new series of medium sized and large panels dense with saturated color and intricate organic shapes, as well as wispy tinted ponds of transparent epoxy floating on poplar veneer.
This exhbition introduces three new installations made from sizeable swaths of cotton canvas, which have been dyed, stained, scrubbed, scratched and crumpled. In the gallery space these works will find their temporary resting place and shape hanging from the ceiling and sprawling on the floor or stretched as a floating membrane in the room or bursting out of a wall. These fallen and molested drapes in spice-infuced orange, brigth blues and smoldering reds and blacks, add a surprising baroque note to the ensemble, and evoce a sense of impending collapse in the exhibition space.
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Katrine Giæver (b. 1960) was educated at the National College of Art and Craft in Oslo, and Visva Bharathi University in West-Bengal, India. The inherent and particular properties of color have been a guiding principle in Giæver’s artistic practice. This interest is demonstrated in works on plywood and alucore supports where color is literally used as building blocks, alluding to the method of collage, transporting the painting from two dimensions to three. She is represented in The National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo and Stavanger Art Musem, as well as in numerous corporate and private collections. Giæver has designed several public commissions, among the most recent are murals for Åsane Kulturhus in Bergen, and murals in stuccolustro for Helsfyr Metro Station in Oslo.
