The Searchers / De letende
Silent Movement
Written by Måns Holst-Ekström
The etching Søstre, Sisters, by Norwegian artist Giske Sigmundstad shows us two women walking towards an ominous horizon filled with both darkness and clouds lined with red. The sisters walk towards the source of light, a light colouring the land with fiery hues of orange and yellow. One looks towards the horizon, perhaps towards the end of the road. Her hair is let out and her coat has tints of green. The other one, hair tied back, looks downwards. She seems to survey the ground immediately on front of them. Or is she more regretful and hesitant in her steps than her sister? One looks towards a goal, the other contemplates the road. Two different attitudes arrested in time, because even if their feet and bodies suggest movement there is a stillness in the picture that invites the viewer to join as if through a sudden opening.
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Between them the sisters carry a large suitcase of the classic kind, from the time before all luggage got wheels. It is not only an emblematic suitcase, it emphasises the weight of luggage, the weight of the past. Suitcases often occur in Sigmundstad's works, sometimes heavy, sometimes lighter, suggesting different stories. Sometimes, as in Husvegg I, House Wall I, or Forbi skogen, Past the Forrest, the suitcase is supplanted by the archetypal Norwegian rucksack, a national symbol as well as a symbol of global back-packers travelling light. Whether the two sisters are returning or leaving is open to interpretation, and so are the contents of their load. Are they taking something with them – the past – or are they bringing something back home? Are they bringing the past into the future? The future is a frail thing; still it is the main investment of Modernity. The past has an imaginary solidity. Sigmundstad seems to capture both.
A departure usually has an arrival as its goal. The goal may be far, it may be close. The space between departure and arrival may be a slice of time rather than a spatial experience. Travelling by airlines, or by underground trains, represents such slices. Other forms of travel – by railway, by car, or simply walking – put us in closer touch with our environment. Many of Giske Sigmundstad's works are focussed on the ongoing process of leaving and arriving, stopping in between, resting and moving on, sometimes returning. Migration is constitutional to the modern condition, to Modernity. Be it represented by early Romantics like Lord Byron and the Shelleys, or refugees and charter tourists of the present. This mobility has its premodern roots in the medieval phenomena of vagrant artists and pilgrims.
Travelling to learn is deeply embedded within the formation and activities of artists. Contemporary art academies continue to encourage and organize travel. International exhibitions are at the core of the art world, as spaces for many kinds of exchange and experience. Giske Sigmundstad exhibits internationally and has studied abroad, in Italy. Several critics, as well as the artist herself, have pointed to influences from predecessors like Giotto, or Giorgio de Chiricho.i There are certainly similarities in the treatment of colours and space. But there is also – in the works all three – a pervading feeling of both silent movement within the figures and a kind of silent movement within the imagined space, akin to the stillness mentioned above.
Sigmundstad's etchings – the result of a careful blend of intention and chance – possess a spatial silence similar to that in the pictures by French painter Balthus, but on a small, unpretentious scale and without the apparent eroticism. Something is happening in the pictures, but the movements often signal moments of hesitance, as in Vinter, Winter, where the man on skis has just stopped and looks back, or so it seems. Sigmundstad makes us wonder what is happening in his head. Is he worried about how to get home through the snow that seems to have just started? Or is he resting? In Reisen I, The Journey I, one of the two women, or girls, bends her head slightly as if regretting something. Or is she just submissive in relation to the other girl's – the one carrying the suitcase – determined walk?
Reisen I and its sequel, Reisen/Huset, The Journey/The House, differ from many of Sigmundstad's other works. There is less volume and colour. The cool pink and blue barely cover the paper, and the girls are more schematic, extremely flat, like linocuts, and transparent. The architectural skeleton of the house in the background is a more familiar feature from other prints. Then, in Reisen/Huset the house stands alone. This is clearly an image of departure, but it remains open to interpretations. In their faintly outlined narratives Sigmundstad's works resemble poems rather than novels.
Finnish critic Marja-Terttu Kivirinta – and others – has noted influences from the 1950's in Sigmundstad's imagery.ii The style of clothes, hairstyles and objects remind us of something highly modern, of Modernity's own restrained classicism, where the men bear the insignia of masculinity and the women those of femininity. Other artists of Sigmundstad's generation, like Swedish Jockum Nordström and Karin Mamma Andersson, also make references to that era in their works. One reason may be the iconic appeal of the style. Persons and objects become easily read signs that facilitate the narrative. They represent a certain timelessness. But another fact may be just as important. These artists did not experience the decade directly. But they have done so indirectly, through their parents. Those were the years when their parents formed their identities and ideals. Quiet, non-revolutionary ideals that their children grew up with. Stories that they need to recast and revise.
The persons in Sigmundstad's etchings are not always quietly leaving or moving. Sometimes they make a halt, as in Vinter. In Husvegg II, House Wall II we see two men at a bonfire. The fire is the only thing colouring the greyish scene. One of the men looks back at us with something accusing in his eyes, or maybe he is just wondering who we are. The women in Husvegg I seemed to have a goal; the men just stand there, immobile. In Dam, Pond, a woman has put her suitcase down and peacefully contemplates her mirror image on the water surface. The allusion to Narcissus is there, but the woman seems more capable of keeping the distance. She does not seem totally absorbed by herself. She will not drown in her own image like her predecessor. She may just be pausing on her route, enjoying the silence, the stillness of the water. Then she will pick up her suitcase again and continue her journey.
Måns Holst-Ekström,
Malmö in August 2008
Måns Holst-Ekström, b. 1963, is an art critic and a writer. He teaches at Malmö Art Academy and the Department of Art History and Musicology, Lund University. He was senior lecturer at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm 2001-2006.
Water Under the Bridge
Written by Line Ulekleiv
The expression "water under the bridge" refers to how experiences and conflicts from the past are rendered less salient with the passing of time. We decide to forget matters that once were urgent. Memories of them are like water that has long since flowed past: the memories stream under the bridge and out to a more diffuse horizon where they can no longer be grasped. The constant movement of water, washing away dead leaves and debris, can be cleansing and comforting, even though some drops of it remain with us. Giske Sigmundstad's etchings preserve this somewhat melancholy and fluid atmosphere, and sketch small scenes that can appear fragile, even though they retain the formative strength that memory imbues.
Giske Sigmundstad's small formats and figurative style are characterized by a kind of lyrical, low-key naivism. In her work, one can detect delicate existential strings spun around intimate moods. This world has a cinematic quality. The pictures are perceived as tranquil, but their sound is also cushioned. By pressing an ear to the picture's surface one could possibly discern a faint grating sound, similar to that of an old LP record.
The use of subdued colours imbues her work with nostalgia, with indistinct nuances that add warmth, but also a sense of disquietude. The figures, often distinctively sketched, are perceived as enclosed in their own space, like props in fragmented narratives. As a result of the chemical etching process, whereby the motive is etched into the plate using acid, the surfaces tend to have an organic and paint-like texture. Giske Sigmundstad deliberately uses spatial effects and architecture as frames for depictions of bodies. The interplay between internal, mental spaces and external, delimiting constructions is a recurrent theme.
For an extended period, the journey remained a key feature of Giske Sigmundstad's choice of motives, and departures and transfers have been depicted in the form of suitcases. Recently, Sigmundstad has moved away from this theme, which she now considers to have more or less completed. The narratives reflected in the motives, which have never been very explicit, are currently reduced to a minimum. The symbolism as well as the narrative strands are more detached from the motive. Thus, a more abstract quality emerges, which Sigmundstad uses to exploit the formal opportunities of graphic art. The use of colours attracts more attention, not least because of the artist's training as a painter.
In Butterfly a dark and brooding mist surrounds a girl standing at a distance into the pictured space, which is filled with irregular white grains reminiscent of snow or hailstones. We cannot see her face because she is holding an umbrella with its ribs sketched in distinct, white lines. To her right, and out of proportion to her, we see the contours of a butterfly spreading its wings to reveal the lines of its fragile and evanescent body. The graphically nuanced texture of the underlying pattern creates a separate substructure, a supporting construction that finds its parallel in the protective contour of the umbrella. This elegant purity and insistence on contours can be associated with the sophisticated compositional principles of Japanese woodblock prints, for example those made by Hokusai during the 1830s, which included monoprints made by pressing a leaf onto the paper. The fragile presence of the leaf corresponds to another new print made by Sigmundstad, in which the main structure of a leaf hangs like a small, sensual and discreet cloud over a row of young men, their arms interlocking (Plate 1). The black lines contrast with the nerves of the leaf, rendered in rusty red.
Literary allusions are still present in Giske Sigmundstad's work, although very concretely in the form of books – the physical manifestation of literature. A peaceful and warm living-room interior, Bookshelf 1, with a boy and a man, renders this focus on books apparent. One of the figures is seated in an armchair turned away from us, so that we are looking over his shoulder, catching a voyeuristic glimpse of the book (an art book?) that he is holding. The other figure stands further into the room and is facing us, also holding a large book, and to the right we can see the edge of a bookshelf. Again, we are being led into a room that oscillates between strict order on the one hand and something secretive and incomplete on the other. The act of reading and the act of viewing appear to be compressed into one and the same picture, not least because the viewer is rendered aware of his own position vis-à-vis the two reading figures. In addition, two paintings hang on the yellow wall that encloses the depicted space: one shows a person leading a horse, the other is a portrait in profile. As in all literature, these pictures within the picture represent an internal, mental space that opens towards a larger common space.
This interplay between introversion and extroversion, the tightly focused and the all‑encompassing is a key feature also of Bookshelf II. A woman is standing with her back to the viewer, facing a bookshelf. Is she seeking for particular book? Here too, the interior is warm and friendly, illuminated by a table lamp. A mystical animal in the foreground to the right indicates a potential threat to this safety. It casts a shadow and is an ambiguous appearance as we cannot determine whether it is a toy or a living animal, a decorative object or untamed nature. This undetermined relationship between humans and animals recurs frequently in Sigmundstad's work – as in the etching showing a dog standing next to a girl clad in a bright green poncho (Poncho). They stand next to each other, but show no signs of interacting. The tight and sparing composition serves to keep all possible lines of connection and parallels fundamentally open.
Lamps as sources of light have for a long time been a motive for Giske Sigmundstad, and electric light contributes to defining the illuminated persons. Lamplight, as a visual attractor, is occasionally treated in playful manner – as when a female figure and the foot of a lamp merge into one (Forest wallpaper). The atmospheric importance and modelling ability of light is clearly demonstrated in Roller blind, where an isolated figure stands near a roller blind and light pours in from the window. Just as in Edward Hopper's paintings, which explored the loneliness and isolation of modern life, the light here serves to stop movement and creates a condensed and timeless space, outside memories and narratives.
Nevertheless: water still flows under the bridge.