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Meta Isæus-Berlin |
On Wednesday, the 4th of February 2009 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. the Baukunst Galerie opens a large solo-exhibition with current paintings of the Swedish artist Meta Isæus-Berlin. “Inside out, Outside in“ is already her second exhibition at the Baukunst Galerie. At the opening Dr. Isabelle Malz, curator of the K20 Kunstsammlung NRW in Düsseldorf, will give an introduction in Isæus-Berlin‘s œuvre. In the exhibition exclusive paintings and drawings from 2007 to 2009 will be shown, which induce a multilayer discourse about the interplay of the inner and outside world.
The artist – born in Stockholm in 1963 – studied applied arts and design at the Konstfack Stockholm from 1984 to 1986 before she graduated in fine arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1993. Her works have already been world-widely presented in international exhibitions – amongst others in the context of the biennial art festivals in Venice, Istanbul, Johannesburg and Melbourne and exhibitions in museums in Breda, Thessaloniki, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Madrid and Barcelona. In 2006 the Liljevalchs konsthall in Stockholm organized a considerable solo-show, which was accompanied by an extensive catalogue, which includes her early installations as well as her first paintings. Since 2005 the works of the Swedish artist are present at art fairs as the Art Basel, the Art Basel Miami Beach and the Armory Show in New York. In 2008 a monograph was published, which provides an extensive outline of the paintings from the past two years.
Meta Isæus-Berlin is interested in the interplay of dream and reality – their reciprocal fertilization and traverse of imagination and reception, the unconscious and the conscious, the internal and external reality. In the foreword of her monograph the artist writes: ”Images of reality do not exist, as soon as I try to create them, they disappear“. Her work is slowly created by a process of sorting and filtering of sensations, cogitations and emotions. The initial point of all her paintings originates from the external world: the daily sensual and social environment of the artist – for the first time also from the landscape and not only from interior rooms as hitherto.
In “At the Seaside” this initial point is the scarce flora of the barren landscape at the Swedish sea, where Isæus-Berlin owns a house which she uses as her studio in summertime. By painting the rare flowers in a baroque opulence and beauty she imparts her very private view of this beloved landscape. Sometimes also books or film adaptations are the source of her paintings. Thus Charles Dickens’ ”Great Expectations“ with its different layers of atmospheres and connotations inspired her to paint “Anticipations and Slow Changes“ and ”Everything Is Possible“. Even both pictorial interiors are deserted, they have a very theatrical character. Deserted spaces are overgrown by twines and roots. A glowing red strikes a cool white, permeates a seating furniture and volatilizes as a delicate fume. In the painting “The Island, Detail“ the artist also deals with an opus of someone else – a room installation of the deceased artist Einar Hylander in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. She gets into the traumata of his childhood by tracing the artist’s associations with Jules Vernes’ “The Secret Island” from 1874. In two other paintings – “Walking Home“ and ”Silent Conversation“ – Isæus-Berlin engages in the emotional world of children calming themselves by bravely proceed walking or speaking with a doll in order to guard against threatening surroundings. However, Meta Isæus-Berlin draws her incitation for her works also on concrete private experiences as the lovesickness of her daughter (“Beate‘s Lovelife“), her own fears (“Call and Shout“) or her affirmative imagination of the submarine world (“Jellyfishes“).
A work of major importance is the painting “April“. It shows a woman shoving by a curtain to view outside. While she is looking from the inside to the outside, she lets the outside inside of her (”Inside out, Outside in“). Her vision changes the perceived world. The inner perspective, her own thoughts, feelings and memories filter her impressions and endues them with her inside. Thus in her paintings Meta Isæus-Berlin exemplifies the subjectivity of our perception, perspective and evaluation of the external world. She uses the productive energy of the interaction of impression and expression, imprinting and filtering to create an inimitable visual universe, which offers a stage to unfold our inside.
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