LILLIAN PRESTHUS (NO)
Lillian Presthus (NO) Lillian Presthus is forming and transforming. Using both old family photographs and patterns from the Norwegian textile tradition, Presthus’ art has a highly personalized starting point
She herself comes from Ytra Arna outside Bergen, a leading area for the Norwegian textile industry, and the influence is unmistakable. By processing former works of art and rural culture, Presthus manages to turn the deeply personal into something universal.
In that way she, so to say, destructs harmony to re-establish it once again in a modified form of new meaning, order and balance: Unfamiliar faces transform into familiarity and Norwegian patterns into any other culture’s artistic expression. The deconstruction technic and the use of either delicate pastel or saturated colour palette cause Presthus’ paintings to become highly sensitive and conspicuous.
Despite the traditional motives from domestic situations and family life, her pieces of art possess a modern touch. In artistic-vice terms, her patterns both function as dynamic and abstract structures and as a play with the immediately two-dimensionality of the canvas. In that sense, Presthus continues the modernist tradition and its search for the possibilities and limitations of the painting media.
Woven Das Kleid mit der Krawatte.
