Anne-Karin Furunes. All Most

About

RYAN LEE is pleased to announce ALL MOST, an exhibition of new paintings by leading Norwegian artist Anne-Karin Furunes. Meditating on the natural world, its sublime beauty, and the current environmental threats imperiling it, Furunes’ series addresses the catastrophic consequences of global warming and the ephemera of nature through monumental depictions of calving icebergs and various transient states of precipitation. This is Furunes’s fourth exhibition at the gallery.

The emphasis of the show is on works that capture the moment when chunks of ice ablate, melt, or break from larger bergs; the exhibition also includes portrayals of clouds pregnant with rain, alongside other powerful interferences of water. Each painting, some of which are up to thirteen feet long, offers an expansion upon the artist’s signature perforation technique. This meticulous method involves applying tiny, hand-made holes to canvas, which is then layered with pointillistlike spots of color that, upon stepping back, mimic the look of halftone printing. Manipulations of light, scale and color deploy slight optical illusions that adjust a viewer’s perception, based on where they’re standing. The immersion in both scene and detail invites proximity and empathy toward the glacial trauma, and its suggestions of imminent climate tragedies.

Employing her long-time engagement with archival photographs, these new paintings are inspired by the ongoing documentation of calving icebergs in the remote archipelago of Svalbard, Norway that have been compiled by glaciologists at the Norwegian Polar Institute. The original images, which depict the dramatic changes in our environment caused by climate change, served as the impetus for Furunes to revisit the subject of the calving iceberg, one which she first explored in her early work over two decades ago.

Furunes also finds inspiration in the wonder and mystery of the transformations that take shape in the natural world at large. From the changing states of climate, to the different speeds at which bodies of water move in waterfalls or maelstroms, “We see spectacular moments of nature’s force that are awe-inspiring,” she says. “As an artist, I want to remind people of the beauty of nature, [but also that it] will be lost forever unless we change our habits of consuming.”

Concepts of slow consumption are imbued not only in each artwork’s invocations, but also in their production. Each painting in ALL MOST is composed manually, laboriously, and lovingly, as Furunes hand-punctures every perforation. Through this process she is literally shedding light on the ongoing destruction of the natural world. Adding dotted layers of indigo, cyan, magenta, and yellow ink to the canvases, Furunes intensifies and deepens the optical effect of each scene: from up close, the pointillist details are entirely abstract, while from afar, the human eye joins red, blue and yellow to create the clarified image. Furunes’ gestures with these dots considers multiple scales and experiences in her compositions, at once creating friction and unity through her precise and astute manipulation of pattern and color. The works, both tragic and captivating, beckon viewers to become re-enchanted by our ecologies. They ignite Furunes’ belief in “a possible future where we can continue to admire life in its manifold shapes and ways,”