Slut dato: 2021-11-28

Idlewild

07.11-28.11

One day, painting in my studio, the radio was playing, I listened to a really beautiful song by the musician Travis. It was called „Idlewild“ and I became curious about the meaning of this word. I was wondering, is it a place, an emotion, or a description of a situation? 

The word can' t be really translated but it derives from the words “idyllic” and “wild”. In novels and songs it is often used as a word for a place where one can withdraw from the outer world to find a private place for introspection. And of course it contains also the little word „idle“, which can be explained as lazy or spending the day with doing nothing. 

In my new paintings I chose to have an intense look into wild nature. Some of them show the structure of trees, some are like a macroscopic view into a meadow or a field. Realistic elements like grasses, leaves, flowers or branches are still visible, but like an insect you are invited to dive deep into the structure of wild nature. The view climbs over the crossing and bending blades of grass, it gets entangeled in the whirls of color and jumps from one yellow leave to the other. 

The condensed structure of this close up is broken up by rather abstract gestures of paint. Sometimes they look like brushstrokes, sometimes they are like drippings that interact with the more realistic elements of the painting. Like wind or traces from atmosphere, they float in the foreground of the painting, get caught and interwind by the elements of nature and are pushed to the background. Theses abstract elements are traces from the background that I choose to keep and preserve during the painting process. Like free forms they float in the space of the painting and interact with the realistic elements, at the same time they are like windows or holes, they offer insight into the process and the background of my paintings. 

Like in “Idlewild,” my paintings offer a place that can be idyllic but at the same time wild, a place where one can meditate about the beauty and chaos of nature. Where human interventions have little endurance, and the energy of growth and decay can be observed in its purest form.

Slut dato: 2021-10-03

Slut dato: 2021-09-19

Collections

The viewer is invited in the exhibition into Nana R H Bastrup's picturesque universe of accumulations e.g. of cardboard boxes in which selected and collected items such as books, flowers and masks are "wrapped" and arranged in collections.

The accumulation has long been an artistic touch in Nana R H Bastrup's practice and can be seen in her installation projects and paintings. The most recent major installation of discarded and accumulated cardboard boxes was in 2020, when she participated in the Changwon Sculpture Biennale in South Korea. In her pictorial world, acrylic on photo-printed canvas, also dominates accumulations of repetitions and rhythms. The chameleon effect in particular with color change and adaptability is a picturesque leitmotif in terms of content, form and meaning. The descending lines, which in their organic linear or non-linear trajectories on the canvases, contribute to a picturesque improvisation in the otherwise rather orderly compositions.