Point Voyeur
2015
Point Voyeur is best decribed as a viewpoint between two different landscapes. Maiken Stene’s body of work can be placed on such a point.
Inspired by the mining industry of her home town Sokndal, Stene has produced a body of work that studies how the extraction of iron ore transforms the landscape. The mining company Titania produces six million tons of ilmenite annualy which is then processed into titanium dioxide, the most commonly used white pigment.
Parallel to this Stene also studied Western national romantic landscape painting. Point Voyeur examines not only the landscape, but also how our perception of the world changes with industrialisation. How do we position our body to find the optimal view of nature? In what way have painters affected our experience of the landscape? Why do we continue to construct artificial viewpoints instead of studying our surroundings through a personal, self-defined gaze?
Stene carries her own landscapes into the gallery, presenting an exhibition with painting- and video installations, that play with how scale and perspective change with the viewer’s location in space.
This exhibition has been shown in three versions; at Vargåkra Gård (SE) in 2014 and at Hå Gamle Prestegard (NO) and Oslo Kunstforening (NO) in 2015.
It consists of these works:
8 sign paintings, oil on wood.
6 paintings, oil on board and canvas, mounted on walls and stands.
A perspective machine.
A theodolite, land surveying tool.
Sandbags.
Text.
Reference books
Inspired by the mining industry of her home town Sokndal, Stene has produced a body of work that studies how the extraction of iron ore transforms the landscape. The mining company Titania produces six million tons of ilmenite annualy which is then processed into titanium dioxide, the most commonly used white pigment.
Parallel to this Stene also studied Western national romantic landscape painting. Point Voyeur examines not only the landscape, but also how our perception of the world changes with industrialisation. How do we position our body to find the optimal view of nature? In what way have painters affected our experience of the landscape? Why do we continue to construct artificial viewpoints instead of studying our surroundings through a personal, self-defined gaze?
Stene carries her own landscapes into the gallery, presenting an exhibition with painting- and video installations, that play with how scale and perspective change with the viewer’s location in space.
This exhibition has been shown in three versions; at Vargåkra Gård (SE) in 2014 and at Hå Gamle Prestegard (NO) and Oslo Kunstforening (NO) in 2015.
It consists of these works:
8 sign paintings, oil on wood.
6 paintings, oil on board and canvas, mounted on walls and stands.
A perspective machine.
A theodolite, land surveying tool.
Sandbags.
Text.
Reference books
Point Voyeur, 2014, oil on canvas, 130 x 90 cm
Point Voyeur is a lookout perched between two types of landscapes.
In one direction the eye perceives boundless ranges of untouched wilderness that when bathed in the evening sunlight, glow like national romantic paintings. In the other direction the eye is pulled into a vast, cavernous pit wherein dinosaurean machines gnarl and gnaw at the mountain with insatiable hunger until the ancient mountain has become tiny bits of gravel.
A caravan is parked at Point Voyeur. Inside, a geologist and a landscape painter meet to discuss the view as seen through their professional perspectives. Their conversation is punctuated by the insistent beating of their clenched fists upon the tabletop.
The moon eventually sets behind one landscape as the sun rises over the other. The two men bid each other Godspeed and leave the caravan.
To the left: Storgangen 1, 2015, oil on canvas, 160 cm x 140 cm.
Storgangen 2, 2015, oil on canvas, steel stand, 160 cm x 166 cm.
Exit Out The Front, 2014, oil on canvas, 120 cm x 100 cm.
Exit Out The Front / Old Rope Way, 2014, two sided, oil on board, 40 cm in diameter, 140 cm in height.
Memory Valley, 2013, oil on mdf, 120 cm x 120 cm.
Back: Weblock, 2014, oil on mdf, 120 x 100 cm, wood frame. Front: Vrengt Sokk, 2014, oil on wood, 35 cm in diameter, 150 cm in height.
Back: Hudson, 2014, oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm, golden frame. Front: Kindred Spirits, 2014, oil on board, approx 30 x 45 x 170 cm.
(adaptation of Asher Brown Durand´s painting by the same title.)
Reference books on display in the office at Oslo Kunstforening.
