Kirsten Rotbøll Lassen
- about Kirsten Rotbøll Lassens painting
The window is the recurrent motif in Kirsten Rotboll Lassen's paintings. In fact, she doesn't paint anything else. In the beginning her paintings were more decorative, but the potted plants on window sills and other small details have gradually been "weeded out", while the compositions have become simpler and more tightly constructed.
The general impression is almost graphic, characterized by large surfaces and vertical and horizontal lines. Rotboll Lassen has moved in the direction of the empty space, where monochrome color-surfaces dominate the canvasses, and she seems to be focussed on how little is actually necessary. Empty space and the non-narrative aspect make the paintings more open in relationship to the observer. You can think with the picture, instead of having everything spelled out. Kirsten Rotboll Lassen mixes elements from art history and small everyday details (like the pattern on a window shade seen in passing) with elements she has made up herself.
Even though the paintings are figurative and have existing window types as their point of departure, Rotboll Lassen is clearly very interested in formal considerations relating to composition and color. In this way her paintings are at the same time very formal and cool and yet also homelike by virtue of the recognizable everyday life that spontaneously makes itself evident.
Kirsten Rotboll Lassen herself perceives her paintings as figurative and realistic. But they can also be seen as abstract. As far as I can see, they resemble that part of abstract expressionism which is called color field and such American artists as Ad Reinhardt, who believed that "art is art (and not anything else)" and Barnett Newman, who like Reinhardt implemented a completely abstract, geometric and at times almost monochrome painting style.
Seen from an art historic point of view Kirsten Rotboll Lassen's paintings seem to be engaged in a discussion with modernism, and that part of abstract painting that started with artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich. In Rotboll Lassen's case it is also interesting to look at a Sophie Taeuber (1889-1943), who with her patterned grids heralds the American Pattern and Decoration movement in the 1970s and especially Robert Delauney (1895-1941), who had his first breakthrough with a big series of, in fact, window images, Fenetres, made in 1911-12 and exhibited in 1913. Delaunay's pictures did not depict windows in the same concrete sense that Kirsten Rotboll does. His pictures were rather windows into the painting than to the world. - Kristine Kern, marts 2007
Education
2011 - Master of Science in Material Culture, University of Aarhus
2010 - Art and Culture Editorial Training, Performing Arts Development Centre, University College Sealand
2000 - 2007 Private Lessons by Ingela Skytte
1999 - 2000 School of Art Spectrum by Ingela Skytte and Thomas Skytte, Copenhagen
1998 - 2000 Diploma in Visual Art at the Danish University of Education, Copenhagen
1986 - Art School in Holbæk
Separate Exhibitions in committee
2013 Kirsten Kjaer Museum, Frøstrup
2012 Gallery North, Copenhagen
2012 "Scenarier2" YARD The shipyard Gallery, Copenhagen (with Kirsten Schauser)
2012 "Scenarier1" CirculationsCentralen, Malmo (with Kirsten Schauser)
2012 Customs House, Helsingør
2011 Black Diamond, Copenhagen
2011 Art warehouse, Ikast (with Hanne Linde)
2010 "Inquiry" Møstings house, Frederiksberg (with Hanne Linde)
2010 Pakhuset Nykøbing Denmark (with Signe Adrian)
2009 Lyngby Art Association
2008 Albertslund library
2008 Gallery Rebecca Kormind "color meeting", Copenhagen (with Anne Marie Wegener)
2007 Main Library, Gladsaxe
2006 NeuroSearch, Ballerup
2004 IBM Denmark, Lyngby
2002 Tryg-Baltica, Ballerup
2001 Force Technology, Brøndby
2000 Danish Maritime Institute, Lyngby
Group Exhibitions in committee
2010 Autumn Art Exhibition, Carlsberg, Copenhagen
2007 Spring Exhibition, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen
2006 Autumn Art Exhibition, The Independent, Copenhagen
2006 Spring Exhibition, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen
2003 Gallery Pi, Copenhagen
2002 Autumn Art Exhibition, Freedom, Copenhagen
2002 Artists Summer Exhibition, Tistrup
2001 Autumn Art Exhibition, The Independent, Copenhagen
Scholarships
2013 Arte Studio Ginestrelle, Asissi, Italy
2013 Fundación valparaiso, Spain
2012 Artist House, Lofoten, Norway
2012 Erling Ruth Dahlers Scholarship
2012 Klitgården
2012 Casa Danese, San Michele, Italy
2011 Gross. L.F. Foghts Fund
2011 The Danish Institute in Athens
2010 San Cataldo, Italy
2010 Gross. L.F. Foghts Fund
Collections
Copenhagen municipality visual range
Member of
BKF
KKF
2012 Member of the Board of KE
sold
sold
- ‹ previous
- 3 of 3
