Lori Bookstein Fine Art is proud to announce its third one-person show of the paintings of Tine Lundsfryd. The works exhibited were painted over the last five years, at times intermittently, and continue to explore the artist’s contradictory embrace of both mathematical order and spontaneous chaos.
Lundsfryd’s compositions evolve out of a series of gentle tugs-of-war between opposing forces. Grids are drawn first in graphite or colored pencil; in time, these underlying structures may be reinforced by the painted forms laid over them or co-opted, altered or erased entirely.
Lundsfryd’s paintings are slow paintings, emerging steadily from many-layered additions and subtractions. Often, the use of flat geometry coexists besides areas of atmospheric depth to create a seemingly infinite complexity of form, like the fractals of a kaleidoscope. Lundsfryd’s surfaces may simultaneously generate an immediate sense of logical, orchestrated form, while allowing deeper patterns and structures to unfold steadily, in time.
The building blocks of Lundsfryd’s webs spring both from nature and the man-made, including motifs sourced from ancient religious symbols and architectural ornamentation. Sources as diverse as the prehistoric sun cross, ancient Mesopotamian symbols, and Roman floor tile mosaics are re-appropriated and united in a kind of secular meditation. Compellingly, many are indistinguishable from their natural counterparts and speak to the inherent geometry of nature. They attest quietly to the universality of human culture: once removed from their original context, concepts such as the sun, the cross, or the flower are distilled into elemental signs and symbols which read clearly across different times and places.
Tine Lundsfryd was born in 1964 in Nykóbing Falster, Denmark. From 1984 to 1987 she studied under the artist Carsten Dinnsen, while also attending courses at the Anthroposophical Society in Copenhagen. She joined the Vaerksted 82 (Studio 82) in 1987, an artist collective consisting of ten young artists working together in a shared studio space. In 1990, under the auspices of the King Frederik and Queen Ingrids’ Fund for Humanitarian and Cultural Purposes, Lundsfryd moved to New York City, where she studied at the New York Studio School. She received her MFA in painting from the Parsons School of Design. In 2000, the artist received the Cultural Award from the American Scandinavian Society. Lundsfryd lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
“Tine Lundsfryd: Recent Paintings” will be on exhibit through October 15, 2011. The gallery’s hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30 to 6. For more information or visual materials, please contact the gallery.