GALLERI HARLEKIN

Morten Juvet 

Morten Juvet is a post-modern artist who believes that pictures can portray a good story, an amusing point or an extraordinary event just as well as words.

"A picture is created in the union between light and darkness. In meeting, colours and forms become visible, and it is here, between the fleeting light and the eternal darkness of the universe that our reality, impressions, dreams and longings are born. It's continuous process which changes with the day, the light and the season. I enter into this constant transformation with my feelings, my perception, my painting and my palette. In my pictures, impressions, memories, longings are gathered into a new composite reality of my perception and visual expression. There, night and day, happiness and anxiety come together. So peace and chaos, stillness and movement are just as important as order and unity. It is here that light meets the darkness in constantly shifting constellations which create new forms, colours, feelings and space - outer and inner landscapes in continuous change. The challenge of taking part in and interpreting this process gives my life a perspective and meaning, catching tiny flashes of light in the darkness and bringing them together in a picture -  an expression, my expression."

Per Harald Hansen

"My paintings are, in a way, a simplification of what I see. I try to extract planes of colour and shape from the landscape....

– I make sketches out in the country. However, when I come home and start painting, I start to improvise a bit. I don't think that the places I paint need to be recognizable.  The planes and shapes are more important.... "

Per Harald Hansen's wide range of landscapes are from Tønsberg and the areas round about. The beaches of Skallevold, the coast of Tjøme, fields and meadows, the deep forests in Ramnes.

– There are many choices in Vestfold. Each season has a different quality...."

Nanti Bryn Hansen

Tradition is an important motif in Nanti Bryn Hansen's pictures. She often uses elements from folk tales, fairy stories and sagas, placed in Norwegian landscapes.

It is this mixture of countryside and dream which give her work its poetic quality, and this quality is also emphasised by the artist's interest in music.

The pictures resemble little poems in which reality and fantasy live side by side.

Her main source of inspiration is the countryside. It is here that she finds the lines, shapes, light and nuances which form the basis for her studio work. She is particularly interested in the musicality, the harmony, this aspect is more important than painting a realistic reproduction of that which she sees.

In many of her pictures Nanti paints elements of folklore in colourful, ornamental borders which add a mystical quality to the finished work and depict the close connection between nature and culture.

Nanti Bryn Hansen often takes the coastline of her home county, Vestfold in Norway, as her motive, "A warm summer’s day in Tjøme" is such a picture, a painting of the kind of warm summer’s day we dream about during the long, cold months.

She focuses on the mild, gentle sides of our coastline, and a constant theme in many of her pictures is the harmony that exists between nature and mankind.

This is continued in "Winter light" which shows another side of this artist, here winter is the theme. The picture is flooded with light, colour and decorative elements, and has an atmosphere somewhat reminiscent of countries further south - and great artist such as Matisse. Dream and reality, nature and culture are blended together in poetic composition.

Edvard Rosén

Edvard Rosén started painting seriously while studying architecture in the sixties. After his debut at the State Art Exhibition, he went to the Norwegian Academy of Art in Oslo.

His earliest pictures were non-figurative and depicted various aspects of modernism. He has subsequently experimented with different techniques, ranging from pure geometry to expressive figuration. This shifting of perspective is much more usual than it was previously, and is related to the development of a multi-faceted society with many means of communication.

In the seventies the artist moved from the non-figurative towards a period of pop inspired work, during his time at the academy his pictures were based more in naturalism/realism.

During the eighties he moved gradually back to abstract painting, but still kept recognizable elements in his pictures, finding inspiration again in modernism. Landscapes dominated his work in the nineties, intense moments, a ray of sunshine in the mist, light on the mountains, dark cliffs and waterfalls. He foundinspiration in the countryside then continued his work back in his studio.

The main elements in these pictures are the powerful, merciless forces of nature combined with intimacy of the subject matter. The fundamental importance of sunlight, running water and the changing of the seasons are the artist’s major concerns. The pictures do not usually indicate any particular period of time, but are composed of many different impulses.

The paintings are modernistic in form, the painter has moved away from the traditional framework of depth and perspective towards a more concrete portrayal of the elements of nature. His paintings are neither romantic nor religious in flavour, instead they depict an unsentimental delight in the landscape, where real life is inspirational enough in itself.