MARI SLAATTELID: "Fakta om kvelden"
STANDARD (OSLO)
PRESS RELEASE
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MARI SLAATTELID
"FAKTA OM KVELDEN [FACTS IN THE EVENING]"
02.02.-02.03.2024 / PREVIEW: FRIDAY 02.02.2024 / 19.00 - 21.00
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STANDARD (OSLO) is proud to present a solo exhibition dedicated to new paintings and works on paper by Mari Slaattelid.
It will sort itself out. It will. Even though its starting point appears to be an accident. Holes. There are all these holes dispersed across Mari Slaattelid's paintings. Idly cut out with a scissor, these coin-sized holes came into being before any brushstrokes were made. Unconsciously? Unintentionally? Unfortunately? No, that's not it. These holes are facts. They lay bare the weave, the weight, and the warm white that makes up the cotton canvas. They measure the distance from the picture plane to the wall at the back of the painting. They map out the field of vision of the viewer that will come to see them. Scattered coordinates, now connected by yellow brushstrokes. Point to point, tying the multiplied nothingness into a web, a grid, a set of unsteady building blocks.
It will sort itself out. The sour yellow against the warm white of the canvas. It will stretch out to reach every grey punctum that interrupts the canvas. That is its sense of purpose and that is how it builds its own sense of place. Leaving a reluctant geometry behind. Hesitantly performing the task, like feet that are still figuring out the steps of the dance. The black and yellow now waltzing across the staves of the manuscript paper. Not quite matching the 3/4 time that is mm-BAP-BAP, but also knowing that the waltz require more than metronomic accuracy. It should be slightly off. It is this sensing of ever so slight shifts in rhythms that makes the Vienna Philharmonic so superior in playing it: anticipating the second beat to come a bit earlier and the third to come a bit later. The waltz, like the painting, should continuously be circling.
It will sort itself out. It will find its own gyroscopic balance. The bells will ring. The day will be over. "The wasted day nobody talks of. The wasted day crawls off on its stomach. Only the chairs stand sternly behind in the halls. In the halls. The empty chairs in the halls - because this day has come to an end. The day that was no day has come to an end. We nodded with our skulls and went outside, went home. The day became a day of shame and will never show itself again. Nothing is nothing, the day has come to an end, it is evening and the wind is picking up. The skulls went home. We don't sit there any longer. We nodded to everything and approved. A nod is a nod. Then it is the evening, and the wind is picking up. The chairs are abandoned, nothing got done. Nothing shall get done tomorrow either - but the chairs we shall fill up and the nods shall be nodded, and the wind - yes the wind is picking up." (Tarjei Vesaas: "The Boat in the Evening", 1968)
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Mari Slaattelid (b. 1960, Notodden, Norway) lives and works in Oslo. "Fakta om kvelden" marks Slaattelid's second solo exhibition with the gallery. Slaattelid's work has been the subject of numerous institutional solo exhibitions including Kristiansand Kunsthall, Kristiansand; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; The Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; The National Museum, Oslo; Linköping konsthall, Linköping; amongst others. Slaattelid was the Festspillutstillingen artist of 2019, accompanied with a solo exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen.
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