Jette van der Lende. Norway

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Jette van der Lende
Lives and works in Oslo, Norway

Statement
My paintings tell stories by focusing on what is important in life-- social, political and personal issues that affect us all. I portray objects that symbolize these issues, combined in purposeful ways, often against black backgrounds in order to let them stand out as if illuminated by spotlight focus complete attention on them, as if illuminated by spotlight. Even though The circumstances or situations they represent may be difficult for some to contemplate, I seek the beauty within them regardless. By painting portraits of common things, I remove all connotations that may relate to specific people, places or times. It is the universality of these symbols and what they represent that is significant-- to all of us, no matter who we are. At the same time, I paint in such a way that these compositions can be taken entirely at face value and appreciated on purely aesthetic terms, as classic representational still-life’s, without the necessity of referencing anything beyond that. Always, however, with an extended invitation to be imaginative and explore further. But the invitation is always extended to explore as deeply and thoughtfully as one might wish.


PAINTINGS BY JETTE VAN DER LENDE: WHISPERS IN AN EMPTY AMPHITHEATER
Jette van der Lende’s realistic oils have the preternatural capacity to stop time. Or at least slow time down. In his novel Slowness Milan Kundera writes: “A word uttered in a small enclosed space has a different meaning from the same word resonating in an amphitheater. No longer is it a word for which he holds full responsibility and which is addressed exclusively to the partner, it is a word that other people demand to hear, people who are there, looking at them. True the amphitheater is empty, but even though it is empty, the audience, imagined and imaginary, potential and virtual, is there, is with them.” With van der Lende the scale of the works may be small and yet we as viewers seem to be witnessing the birth of something special, an object caught in a cat’s cradle of relations (optical and mental) with other objects and the space that envelops them. This artist has the uncanny ability to create visionary work that intimates the sacred souls and sacred lives of the circumstances of objects in the world. The lucidity and control through which Jette van der Lende paints her seemingly modest objects and spaces create a deeply saturating auratic experience for the viewer. What might this aura cling to? It is clearly given over to the sensed experience of the artist. This experience triangulates between several aspects of creative activity of giving form and then giving life to form. The first aspect under scrutiny are her mental, ideational and ideological responses to the object or objects she depicts (their representation) as signifieds. Next are her sensations that are given form through the handling of her paint along the surface of her pictorial plane, including the layering and feathering of her colored brush strokes, the compositional structure, the balancing of hues and shadows. Finally one might consider the third aspect her emotional responses to her self, her mental condition and psychic disposition as she pictorially refers to her subjects as signifiers. This aspect of her vision takes into account the correspondences that are made as the artist begins and ends the activity of painting. Call this the Mallarmean aspect (we are referring here to the poet’s injunction to describe not the thing but the effect of the thing on the mind). The end result of course is the object that we as viewers see in its completed form, the finished painting. The tri-partite activity, in unison, creates the artist’s sense experience which in turn creates the auratic condition under which we are moved by the painting’s presence. In Jette van der Lende’s case what the artist paints and how she paints conspires to create an experience that suggests the secret lives and the sacred souls of objects becoming manifest in time. Van der Lende is one of these surpassingly gifted visual creators who achieve a high level of distinction in creative terms: in a deliberative way she suggests the ongoing passing of life. Her paintings (particularly in her Georges de la Tour-like atmospheric works that appear to be lit from a single source) one senses flux as well as serenity. The viewer is transfixed by the intimation of the flowing of each moment saturating as flows the contours of her depicted objects and the spaces that berth them. Getting immersed and enmeshed in this artist’s work involves a reflection on what came to pass in the works’s coming-to-be. The artist’s painting experience incorporates her tracking of her “small sensations” (to swipe a phrase out of the Matissean notebook for a moment). Once this is done to her satisfaction she arrives at the culminating moment, the designated terminus point which signals the painting’s completion. With her assertion on the ephemerally of the moment being recorded with such fidelity through her gossamer sense of light (natural light and the light of the sun, but also the light of fire’s embers…) it is no wonder that while the subjects of her work are varied: (for example, Three Blocks (2004) The Spirit of Freedom (2005), Protection Against Lies (2005), The Soul of Flower Death (2005)) van der Lende’s vision remains inviolate and pure. She speaks to us in a large amphitheater about small things but in a large way. And we are alone with her in this gigantic mental setting as she starts the wheels of consciousness turning. The presence of an intimate immensity saturates this artist modestly sized, yet exponentially loaded artworks. They convey a deeply felt and deeply held emotional experience. This is all the more so because of the memento-mori aspect of the work. The irrevocability and undeniability of time’s passing is foremost and center in the artist’s mind as she depicts her objects. In this respect Van der Lende’s capacity to mimetically re-present the world through her chosen visual vignettes is haunting and bracing. Life is Protected, for example, a recent oil that showcases the depiction of an egg as a glowing orb next to a fragment of a cracked white shell, brings everything home: the proof of internal strength is the capacity to be, to co-exist, with our vulnerability. Jette van der Lende creates slow artworks that bespeak of great things in intimate detail. Her artworks serve as mirrors to us, reflecting timeless internal configurations of the self, imitating in some manner models in an external world, but also proudly defining the mirror as if only subservient to the Idea that Oscar Wilde defines as: “it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors”. (D.F. Colman is an art writer based in Manhattan.)

Selected EXHIBITIONS
2016 – Oppegård Kunstforening exhibition at Rosenholm Campus August 31 – September 2.
2016 – Exhibition of the Ley Dan Award winners at Ley Dan Gallery in Canada June 13 - June 20
2016 – The Masterworks from the International Guild of Realism Tour, Albany Museum of Art, Albany GA May 19th – July 26
2015 – Appleton Museum of Art, FL, September 1th – October 31th
2015 – R.W. Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport, LA, May 19th – July 26th
2015 – Riflessismo’s International Exhibition, Kongsvinger, May 13th – May 24th
2014 – Robert Lange Studios, Charleston SC. November 7th – 28th
2014 – Eiffel-Tower, Paris October 23rd
2014 – World Museum Liverpool, July 3rd – 6th
2013 – Riflessio in Arezzo June 29th – July 14th
2013 – The Lloyd Gill Gallery in UK, April 13th – May 10th
2013 – Kolben by the Art Society of Oppegård in March
2012 – Chianciano Art Museum, International Art Award -” Art of the Mind” 15th – 22nd September
2012 – Gagliardi Gallery in London 27.April – 5.May
2011 – The Chianciano Biennale, 13-27 September in Tuscany Italy
2011 – New Art Center, ArtLook. Bookrelease and exhibition December 27 – 31.
2010 – The publication Contemporary Art Watch ArtLook deputing 25 November at The New Art Center
2010 – Arts Festival in October, in New York
2009 – CanCan, exhibition in New Art Centre, New York in January
2009 – The Annual Fashion District Art Festival at New Art Center Oct. 16 to Oct. 18.
2009 – New Art Center, New York
2009 – Galleri Galtung, Norway
2009 – Gulden Kunstverk, Norway
2008 – First International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Chapingo 08, “Art with Root in the Earth” In Chapingo, Texcoco, Estado de México,
2008 – Østlandsutstillingen, (national juried exhibition), in eastern Norway and Lübeck Germany
2008 – Trudy Labell Fine Art Gallery, Naples, Florida
2008 – Scottsdale Fine Art Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona
2007 – SmallWorks – The Greenwich Workshop, Connecticut
2007 – Scan, exhibition in New Art Center, New York
2007 – Biennale EMMA (European Masters of Modern Art) in Burgau, Austria.
2006 – Palm Art Award Exhibition, Leipzig, Germany
2005 – Biennale Florence, Florence, Italy
2005 – Østlandsutstillingen, (national juried exhibition), in eastern Norway and Kiel Germany
2005 – Oppegård Art Society, Norway
2005 – Veritas, Oslo, Norway
2004 – Agora Gallery, Chelsea, New York
1999 – Represented Norway in Winsor and Newtons worldwide millennium competition.

Selected AWARDS
2011 – 2.prize at the Biennale Chianciano, given by The European Confederations of Art Critics.
2011 – ART NOW 4 Online Global Art Annual Exhibition at www.artoteque.com (Artoteque Online Gallery, London), diploma of excellence.
2011 – ART TIME 2 Online Global Art Annual Exhibition at www.artoteque.com (Artoteque Online Gallery, London), diploma of excellence.
2010 – Palm Art Award – Certificate of Excellence – given for outstanding quality and originality of her art.
2010 – 2.eBIENNIAL Of Contemporary Art at www.artoteque.com (Artoteque Online Gallery, London), diploma of excellence.
2010 – Selected for the participation to the 1st international award of painting, sculpture and graphics City of New York.
2010 – MAB 2 / Media 2. Art Biennial of Contemporary Art at www.artaddiction.net (Art Addiction Online Gallery, London) diploma of excellence.
2009 – The 9th Female Artist’s Art Annual Exhibition and Competition at www.artaddiction.net (Art Addiction Online Gallery London), diploma of excellence.
2008 – ART NOW 3 Online Global Art Annual Exhibition at www.artoteque.com (Artoteque Online Gallery, London), diploma of excellence.
2008 – 1.eBIENNIAL Of Contemporary Art, at www.artoteque.com (Artoteque Online Gallery, London), diploma of excellence.
2007 – Palm Art Award – Merit Award – given in recognition an appreciation of the outstanding originality of her Art.

MEMBERSHIPS
The Association of Norwegian Visual Artists, Oslo, Norway
Danish association of Visual Artists
CAN, New York, NY
International Guild of Realism, IGOR, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA

LIBRARY
2015 – Who is Who in visual Art. Art Domain.
2012 – ART IN VOGUE - 123 CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS. Page 134. Publisher Masters Of Today (MOT) London. ISBN 9789189685130, Release April 17,1012.
2012 – CREATIVE GENIUS - 100 CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS. Pages 122-123. Publisher Masters Of Today (MOT) London. ISBN 9789189685154. Release Dec 7,1012.
2012 – Selected to be presented in Women in Art by Oliver and Reinhard Fuchs.
2011 – Selected to be presented in Best of Worldwide Still Life Artists, Volume I book competition.
2011 – Italian Arte.
2011 – ArtLook, CAN.
2011 – International Encyclopedic dictionary of modern and contemporary art. International Academy Santarita.
2011 – International Dictionary of Artists.
2011 – Who’s Who  in visual art. Art Domain.
2010 – Quotations catalog. casa Editrice.
2010 – Avanguardie Artistiche. Centro Diffisione Arte.
2010 – International Register of Painters and Sculptors. Italia in Arte.
2010 – Who’s Who in visual art. Art Domain.
2010 – Article in International Artist Magazine no.70.
2009 – Article in “Kunst for Alle” now “Kunst” In Norway.
2009 – Who’s Who  in visual art. Art Domain.
2008 – Who’s Who in visual art. Art Domain.
2008 – La estetica y el arte contemporaneo. Atcultura.
2007 -  SEETAL.