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Artist statement , Gro Finne

Portrait as the dialogue of intimacy, Harald Flor

Why self-portrait? Gro Finne

 

Artist statement , Gro Finne

My work is about the course of nature and time and the influence of history and culture. Emphasis is on portraits and self-portraits but also themes from nature, tree-forms and flowers.

Everything in nature is in motion and everything leaves its mark.
Nature creates traces in sand and snow after waves and wind, in trees while they grow.

To draw is to leave evidence; later it becomes a pattern, a picture.

I am working in a process that alter between drawing and printing. Through this the drawing and
printing processes are recorded and expressed interpretively.

I build up my portraits with lines that I allow to follow the large and small forms of the figure in a rhythmic pattern. The end result becomes an overall structure.

My intention is not of descriptive character. The expression is distinct from the path of the stroke, like a fingerprint.

In the prints the formal linear paraphrasing becomes accented by the printed planes; varied in color and value.

 

Short biography, Gro Finne

My work alternates between drawing and printing. I started my education and
career as a painter and I still call myself a painter. Now I "paint" with the roller
in the printing process.

My portraits and self-portraits deal with the stages of life and the different roles
we play during our life.

My intention is not a descriptive character. The image evolves during the
working process. Everything is in motion in nature and leaves its mark. To draw
is to leave evidence, later it becomes a pattern, a picture.

Garments and textiles contains dreams and fantasies, carry a story. "Self-portrait
in old dress" is an important picture to me and I have worked it through many
stages. It's a portrait of my body expressed by the old dress.

I bought the garment for a wedding gown, the age of 38 at a retro shop.

Years later drawing the roses on the garment gave me a difficult and interesting
task, following the pattern to shape my body.

Why self-portrait?
Several prominent female artists have expressed themselves through self-portraits.
They are models in a tradition I am attached to. In the self-portrait, I can
create myself in a shape I find valid, and I can expose myself the way I feel.

But who am I? I don't know and the image changes constantly.

To be an artist is not a role, it's something I do. It's to act, to perform, to create,
to use my body, my eyes, my hands. To work up the materials, conduct the lines,
roll out the colours. To report what I have been observing, as accurate and clear
as possible.
Then an Image can revolve, maybe unexpected for myself or maybe strange and
foreign for people that know me. Not like they think of me. It's something else,
something new, and then I think I have gained something other people can recognise.

Gro Finne. Born 1951. Works and live in Oslo. Educated from the National
Academy, arts and craft and the National Academy of fine art in Oslo, Norway.

First solo exposition in Yong Artist Gallery in 1986 and last solo exposition in
The Gallery of the association of Norwegian printmakers.

Is represented in the Norwegian National museum of art and Oslo city museum.
Participated in European graphic triennial in France, Toulouse 2010 and in the
nordic/ international portrait exposition by Carslberg foundation, Denmark 2012.
Was rewarded the main grant from association of The Norwegian printmakers
in 2016 and the prize for best print in the National annual juried exposition 2016.

Rewarded several grants from Association of Norwegian visual artists. Created
the annual graphic work given to musicians and contributors at Risør International
Chamber-Music festival 2017.

 

Why self-portrait? Gro Finne

Several prominent female artists have expressed themselves through self-portraits.
They are models in a tradition I am attached to. In the self-portrait, I can create myself in a shape I find valid, and I can expose myself the way I feel.

But who am I? I don't know and the image changes constantly.
To be an artist is not a role, it's something I do. It's to act, to perform, to create, to use my body, my eyes, my hands. To work up the materials, conduct the lines, roll out the colours. To report what I have been observing, as accurate and clear as possible.

Then an Image can revolve, maybe unexpected for myself or maybe strange and foreign for people that know me. Not like they think of me. It's something else, something new, and then I think I have gained something other people can recognise.

 

Portrait as the dialogue of intimacy, Harald Flor

"They incarnate, frail as they are, a forgotten self-respect. They confirm, despite everything, that life was and is a gift"
- John Berger on the mummy-portraits of Fayum

With the title of her exhibition "Traces and Indentation", Gro Finne poses two synonyms against one another. But between such intimately connected words, there is a considerable disparity. The words carry a different dimension altogether, which is one of existentialism, and is connected with those two processes Finne's art is derived through. In the portraits - making the most dominant genre - the weathered fissures represent signs of change. Meanwhile the lines captures everything, from encompassing the character of the contours, to bestow the decorative elements a dramatic and expressive, as well as vitalizing expression.

In 1981, Gro Finne made her début with her first exhibition. It came about with a passion for painting, so typical for the time, and a critical attitude to society, though it was for the most part decreasing in popularity with her contemporaries. Thus she found a more fitting society with the slightly older of her colleagues: Sonja Krohn, Marianne Hølmebakk and Marit Wiklund, all of whom directed a sharp critique against what they regarded as destructive forces in the capitol.

With the exhibition "Oslo, Oslo" the quartet made a unified critique, albeit with a difference in visual approach against the economical ranging liberalization that lead to an architectural and social breakdown of the urban society in Oslo. The capitol's processes culminated with the closing of Nyland Yard, annihilating traces of the industrial culture in the centre of Oslo. The workforce was forced to the city's outskirts, or out of the capitol altogether. Meanwhile Aker Brygge was invaded by lawyers, bankers and realtors of the white-collard crew.

Though the winds of change commercialized the centre of Oslo, the city, as a social organism, continued to offer inspiration to Gro Finne's art. Paintings gained a breath of fresh air from the life of one of the east-side parks, Olav Ryes Plass. With her studio close by, in a former stable, she found a workplace that afforded the peace to work on the impulses of quickly sketched notes from the neighbourhood.
Localization did not reduce Finne to a hometown-artist and topographically contained by the surroundings. The park-scenery of Grunerløkka offered a continually changing scene. An arena where people can alter between artistically dynamic rushing to keep social engagements or poetically brushing signs of communication and calm, when time and temperature allows it. Encompassed by trees, standing heavy in bloom, or with its' branches empty, resembling the silently speaking spectator. Symbolizing, as well, the performing and reflective appearances in the park, intimately connected with the cyclic current of nature, with a range of colour that energetically claims, or establish a muted harmony with the mood of the season.

It was the drawing that made the foundation for the artistically changing and continually altering attitudes of the city-scene of Olav Ryes Plass. The independent character of the line, was later developed in Finne's drawings of fictional characters as seen from the dim place in the audience of the theatre. Quickened sketches of Becketts apathetic characters placed in an absurd universe, Jon Fosse's explicit characters, or exponents of the physically expressive play that "Grusomhetens Teater", with its' Artaud-influenced style, is maintained. They where partially carried through a graphical process. Etching that preserves the lines impression of being a resolute answer to the artist's experience of central moments of the act.

To portray in the way of Gro Finne in "Traces and Indentations" includes an entirely different process of observation and self-reflection, combined with an aesthetic of slow deliberation. The approach through the line has an intimate relationship - or close relation - as a fundamental premise.

With this as a starting point, a fruitful dialogue between the model and the artist, distant from the style of the commissione portrait, with its' representation and pretence, is allowed to develop. The self-induced mission with an intimacy within a social context with family or friends carries an existential dimension. Perhaps Finne also sees a fragment of what Edvard Munch named "my art's sentries" within them.

The trusting intimacy between artist and model calls forth courage to create an uncompromising notation of every feature. Situations fade in an intense reception for the ever-changing signals that occur through the models attitude and expression. Perhaps is the human value of these cooperations a particularly stimulating aspect for Finne within these dialogues.
Still, the artistic process does not come at an end with this. The continual work from the drawing to the graphical version expands, not only the technical range, but accentuates and refines aspects within trace of the lines. The discerning and attentive in the line that envelopes the daughter, Marta, is supplemented with colours, paper-fibre, and indentations of grainings that differ the foundation of tone for the young woman's preceptive and attentive person.

Finne perceives time's indentations in her own features, but embodies vitality and supplement within the classical format in figure drawing. Through visual alterations within the colours of a hairdo, skin and summer dresses, where both the contour and the patterns create a rhythmically boundless development. A visible statement that "Joie de Vivre" is a state that do not cease to be, and that a longing for closeness endures.

The last remnant of vitality is a signature trait of the two weathered and cropped trunks that Finne places symmetrically against the monochrome and symbolically charged surfaces of green and red. Equipped with the same number and German title, numbers and titles indicate a scientific classification. But they do not alter the character of the picture from that of the resemblance of a torso. A word with it's origin in the Italian trunk. But here, the weathered and wounded trunk still claims a foundation in the earth. And channel, as if obstinate, the possibility of new leaves.

It is more than a coincidence when Finne has selected the neck of a thorny rose as the catalogue-cover. Despite the drawing being made in 2010, a new version, red as blood, made in screen-print from 2011, enhance this idea. The rose will never look as it once did, after the terror of 22th of July, and Gro Finne conflates many meanings in her version. The supine position on the page resembles that of a victims attitude, and the cropped flower calls forth, through it's colour and fragile being, a dimension of pain. Thus the image becomes both indentations after a period of grief, and traces of a participating action.


Harald Flor
Januar 2012