Anette H Flensburg at Galleri Andersson/Sandström Stockholm, 3/11-19/12-2008

Walls of paper is the title of Anette H Flensburg’s new series of paintings. The motives are paper models of rooms, their frail and makeshift nature reflected in the paintings. The walls or floors are reflective, mirroring the room itself. The reflections become distorted and organic forms, given a life of their own. There is a suggestive and romantic air to the paintings, similar to that of renaissance painting.

The box shape of the rooms adds to the feeling of the paintings being dreamlike scene tableaux. But contrary to the theatre stage, no people are acting on these scenes. The rooms remain emptied of people and nothing happens, though anything can happen. The focus is upon the visual, while the stories, the incidents, are latent, lingering. A simple chair only makes the viewer perceive the room as even more empty; the feeling of absence and isolation becoming even more present.

But saying that nothing happens is not wholly true; lively patterns seek their way across the floor, down and out through the walls. The limit between the concrete and the imaginary world become blurred. For a fraction of a second, everything is totally still, yet in motion.

Anette H Flensburg, born in 1961, studied at the School of Art and Design in Kolding, Denmark. She is one of the leading painters in the Nordic countries. In 2004 she was awarded the second prize of the Carnegie Art Award, an award to recognize and support distinguished artists in the Nordic countries. Four years later she was again nominated.