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Lot Essay
‘When I work, I try to have the confidence to follow an inner voice – to take away things that bother me… I paint and repaint, and try to surprise myself without losing course, balancing with one foot in madness and the other in a sensible shoe.’ – Karin Mamma Andersson
Exhibited as part of Zones of Contact, the 15th Biennale of Sydney, 2006, Karin Mamma Andersson’s Theatre conjures up a painterly poetics of space. Segmented into distinctive planes, each is secured by a different theatrical backdrop: a grey wall of Corinthian columns, their capitals vaguely sketched in; a dramatic mountain panorama; a gilded mirror. The background is anchored by a black unreachable void, and above, a ceiling tile hinges open, a trapdoor to the stage overhead. Much of the canvas is taken up by aqueous washes of paint, and Theatre is rendered in a neutral palette of dusty pink, warm grey, and yellow. The effect is at once elusive and thrilling, encapsulating the liminal space of the backstage. Depth itself is at play in Theatre, mimicking the illusory strategies and false perspectives found in actual stage sets; Andersson’s interest in space was inspired by archaeological sites, crime
scene photographs and sceneographies, themselves sites of specific sorts of performances. Poet Christian Hawkey describes her paintings as ‘a space cut in half, a half-space, on that opens outward toward the viewer, invited the viewer into an awareness that they are positioned (as art is positioned, as poetry is positioned) in a between-space, a space between here and there – a theatre’ (C. Hawkey writing to K. Andersson, Bomb, Issue 100, July 2007). Andersson often slyly skews the perspective in her paintings, resulting in a multiplicity of viewpoints reminiscent of the symbolic perspective employed by Trecento painters who distorted physical space to comment on the mysteries of incarnation. Although grounded in architectural elements, Theatre feels inherently otherworldly and ungraspable, as imaginary and emotive as the fictive performances of a playhouse, an uncanny and inviting dreamscape.
Exhibited as part of Zones of Contact, the 15th Biennale of Sydney, 2006, Karin Mamma Andersson’s Theatre conjures up a painterly poetics of space. Segmented into distinctive planes, each is secured by a different theatrical backdrop: a grey wall of Corinthian columns, their capitals vaguely sketched in; a dramatic mountain panorama; a gilded mirror. The background is anchored by a black unreachable void, and above, a ceiling tile hinges open, a trapdoor to the stage overhead. Much of the canvas is taken up by aqueous washes of paint, and Theatre is rendered in a neutral palette of dusty pink, warm grey, and yellow. The effect is at once elusive and thrilling, encapsulating the liminal space of the backstage. Depth itself is at play in Theatre, mimicking the illusory strategies and false perspectives found in actual stage sets; Andersson’s interest in space was inspired by archaeological sites, crime
scene photographs and sceneographies, themselves sites of specific sorts of performances. Poet Christian Hawkey describes her paintings as ‘a space cut in half, a half-space, on that opens outward toward the viewer, invited the viewer into an awareness that they are positioned (as art is positioned, as poetry is positioned) in a between-space, a space between here and there – a theatre’ (C. Hawkey writing to K. Andersson, Bomb, Issue 100, July 2007). Andersson often slyly skews the perspective in her paintings, resulting in a multiplicity of viewpoints reminiscent of the symbolic perspective employed by Trecento painters who distorted physical space to comment on the mysteries of incarnation. Although grounded in architectural elements, Theatre feels inherently otherworldly and ungraspable, as imaginary and emotive as the fictive performances of a playhouse, an uncanny and inviting dreamscape.