Art Review - March Issue - (Page 97)

Warning : session_start : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 9 Warning : session_start : Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent output started at /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php:9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 9 Warning : Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by output started at /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php:9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 10 words EMMA GRAY Håvard Homstvedt Remnants, 2006, oil and acrylic on linen, 183 x 274 cm. Courtesy the artist and Kantor/Feuer Gallery, Los Angeles works utilise oil paint the way a weaver manages the warp and weft of a tapestry – the marks mimic the movement of a shuttle gliding consistently back and forth across the canvas. These textile-like paintings are simple yet sophisticated, bearing the mark of a traditionally trained artist – Homstvedt studied at Yale and the Rhode Island School of Design – but also his cultural duality. Homstvedt o sets the homespun arts and crafts of his Scandinavian homeland with the high-polish urban lustre of New York City, where he lives and works. The ﬂat and sometimes illustrative surfaces of the artist’s recent work could have slipped right o a Gary Hume or John Wesley painting. Yet Homstvedt’s mystical content owes more to the archetypal imagery of, say, Goya or fellow Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum than to any YBA. In conversation, Homstvedt breathlessly skips across the centuries, identifying aspects of his work with artists like Michael Raedecker or Balthus, who link to two other important Homstvedt hallmarks: the use of symbolic and allegorical imagery, and of a sombre Norwegian palette consisting of sumptuous ochres and myriad shades of burnt umber. Darker colour ﬁelds are punctuated with lighter notes of grass-green or golds that momentarily lighten the pitch in an otherwise subdued world. They are haunting images which evoke other-worldliness, but the paintings are neither the stu of dreams or nightmares. Depicting solitary ﬁgures or heads transported into abstracted landscapes or interiors, they are often culled from observed moments or media imagery stockpiled by the artist for the express intent of repurposing, and they resonate with the viewer more like a snapshot from a dream sequence or stanza than the more obvious arc of a fairy tale. Take Tarp 2005 , a painting involving a complicated construction of six men encircled, each holding the edge of a tarp-like fabric above their heads. Its inspiration was, in fact, a newspaper photo of a group of soldiers, but it was also inspired by Goya’s happier early paintings of children dancing in a circle. Such is the contrary and compelling reach of Håvard Homstvedts visual impetus. Thirty-year-old Homstvedt, who shows with Kantor/Feuer Gallery in Los Angeles and has quietly established himself while garnering the attention of major art critics for his highly technical fabric-like surfaces and anti-pop stance, will celebrate a homecoming of sorts later this year. The artist will mount his ﬁrst major solo show in Norway, at the Gallery Riis in Oslo, in November. NORWEGIAN ARTIST HÅVARD HOMSTVEDT’S LATEST p 91-98 Future Greats AR Mar07.i97 97 6/2/07 17:56:10 Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in Unknown on line 0 Warning : Unknown : Failed to write session data files . Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct /var/lib/php/session in Unknown on line 0

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Art Review - March Issue

Manifesto
Dispatches
Consumed
Tales from the City
David Lynch
Marcel Dzama
Future Greats
Art Pilgrimage: Moscow
Mixed Media: Moving Images
Mixed Media: Photography
Mixed Media: Digital
Reviews
Book Reviews
On the Town
On the Record

Art Review - March Issue

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