MARI SLAATTELID: "Blason"
MARI SLAATTELID
“BLASON”
22.01.-13-03-2022 / KRISTIANSAND KUNSTHALL, KRISTIANSAND
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Kristiansand Kunsthall is pleased to present the exhibition Blason by Mari Slaattelid, an artist who since the 90s has distinguished herself as one of Norway's most prominent painters. The exhibition shows the new series Blason, together with a selection of other paintings.
Blazoning is a verbal description of the visual content of a coat of arms. It is short and concise and historically functioned as a statement shouted when the knights entered the arena, to announce the owner of the weapon to the spectators, "In red et gold oak tree". Slaattelid seeks in painting what a blazon does in heraldry, she extracts an essence, which in this case is the colour, and conveys it to us as simply and directly as possible. The shield also provides motif and form to Slaattelid's paintings, but they are emptied of figures and geometric divisions. Instead, flaps and tongues are lifted and underlying colors are revealed.
The shields are painted on shape-cut, loosely hanging canvases. This links the images to the Shaped Canvas tradition in American post-war art, where cut-out canvases dominated abstract painting, especially through the 60s. Slaattelid investigates how the shield as an image turns from the wall when it is lifted from the everyday sphere, or history, into the gallery space. Does a shield painting "speak" to us in a different way than the conventional rectangular canvas?
The word blazon has the sound of at least one language, mostly French, and can be spelled with s or z, I prefer s. Blason is used for shield marks, but is also a word for the peculiar language that describes the content of a shield. The Norwegian word for such a depiction is blazoning, usually a sentence, only where the visuals are made clear, like this: In red, a gold upright lion. I read about this somewhat rigid translation of image into writing in Jørn H. Sværen's "Heraldic key" in the British Museum collection . Here I discovered something as unexpected as the heraldic charm, the pretentiousness of the rule-governed pictures, and it was this that first set me on the idea of a shield painting.
I think I would like a painting that feels as matter-of-factlylike these shields. A visual language that can be talked about in a blazoning way, barely, but also cryptically. It should have the expression of a good sign, but the content should be uncertain, where it lies in fabric and knots, shine and shine, and begs for attention, perhaps without having anything to say. The will to express all painting has, both the released and unreleased will, is to feel yourself in. The drive, both the thought and the work, must be found in what is written at the end, in the picture on the wall. The desire for content does not need to be fulfilled, painting is nevertheless turned towards the world. A material is presented, and there is nothing underneath. When a piece of content always comes up, you can see the various kinds of things drifting by. Where the content is, the image may not be. Where the image is, is no longer contained.
-Mari Slaattelid
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Photography Tor Simen Ulstein
