Lars Elling Fictions

Recently the recipient of the prestigious Artist Association invitational exhibition in Oslo, Elling’s show, entitled Fictions, will consist of 10 new paintings.

This group of paintings seeks to create enigmatic narratives within dreamlike pictorial spaces. With images sourced from old magazine photographs, family snapshots, and even reproductions from Old Master tomes, Elling’s paintings examine the dramatic potential inherent in combining such familiar but disparate imagery, and the ambiguity created by the agglomeration of these multiple and potentially conflicting vignettes.

The titles, too, are significant. The artist is a published playwright and it is clear that the titles of his work reflect such a literary persuasion. Often implying a quotation from a novel or poem, the titles seem to represent a tranche of a greater narrative, the beginning and end of which remain a mystery.

His methodology involves rotating the canvas as he paints the various passages, thereby denying the conventional north/south, east/west axes that typically form the basis for figurative paintings, and creating a spatial disorientation that verges on the abstract.

A master technician, Elling makes his own paints by blending egg tempera with pure pigment and linseed oil, creating a viscosity of paint and quality of surface unique to his output. A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

When: May 21 - July 3
Where: Nicholas Robinson Gallery, 535 W20th Street, NYC