Kristin Romberg and Hege Liseth shares an interest in painting and storytelling - interested in the paints flickering flatness and depth, in pattern and a busy surface. They’re thinking about busyness in their every- day life, and about the time it takes to make something, and to repeat something over and over again. The patterns are comforting and the mess discomforting, yet still enjoyable. Enjoyable to see how a glob of paint become an image and an image diffuse to become a glob of paint – like shapeshifting in a fairytale. A thing that is inherently autonomous and alone (like paint) merges with something else to become something new (an image). When is it only a glob of paint and when does it become an image, and then again - becomes a glob of paint?
Kristin Rombergs paintings ooze energy and power, and consists an effortless style. Through layers of acrylic brushstroke, charcoal and pencil on canvas, we recognize a diva, a girl in her puberty, a female model, hiding or showing herself in an unknown identity. We are not sure she is real or if she just have put on a costume. Romberg has been working on the same subject for several years. Using photos of women from glossy magazines as a starting point, she transforms the models into rough and harsh figures without identity. Romberg is playing with clichés, and manage to create a strange fusion between photographs from women-magazines and cultural icons as Gypsies in a pin-up style. The figures seduce and reach out towards the viewer with their gestures and powerful visual presence. So close, yet simultaneously in a distance. We cannot get eye contact, the faces of the women are covered or not there at all. They are all on the surface. We have to guess if the story told is true or false, or even the actual story not told at all.
Hege Liseths paintings and visual universe seek to make a connection between the state of consciousness and one of sleep. A transient condition where reality plunges into the surreality of a dream. Hege Liseth is interested in the different layers of experiencing what is real and what is unreal. Through a myriad of forms and a ability to deal with light, new landscapes arise and the viewer is drawn in towards the core of a differ- ent reality. Simple visual elements as the circle, or fragments of natural forms, are selected to provide few specific references and try to move the visual language to something that invokes a variety of associations. Perhaps, however, new forms reminiscent of something familiar. The images can often refers to a mental space, or be associated with growth or cycles in a micro-or macrocosm universe - like a mutant plants or plants from unknown places.
In her animation there is the changes and movements that is creating the story, based on the drawings. The title “Homo bulla” is playing with the ancients metaphor of man as a exquisitely fragile and transient bubble. The film shows a creature who in various ways puts things in motion and gets scenes to change.
