Anne-Karin Furunes “Together but Apart”

RYAN LEE

[Image: Anne-Karin Furunes, Kronebreen, Svalbard, Norway, 2013 Painted and perforated canvas. 78.7 x 157.5 in.]

This event has ended.

RYAN LEE presents Together but Apart, an exhibition of new work by Anne-Karin Furunes. The exhibition will shed light on the increasingly urgent threat of climate change, particularly as the inhabitants of Fennoscandia, the Sámi people, experience it. Together but Apart includes a selection of portraits, landscapes, and monumental paintings rendered in Furunes’s signature technique of perforated painted canvas.

Furunes’ imagery is drawn from photographs housed at the Polar Archive at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsö as well as the Sophus Tromholt Collection at the University of Bergen Library-a world-famous archive of nineteenth-century images of the Sámi people taken during the first scientific expedition to study the Northern Lights. Though her paintings appear photographic, they are created entirely by hand through a process of meticulous perforation that mimics the looks of halftone printing. Furunes begins with a monochrome canvas. She then translates the photographic image to canvas by creating a constellation of perforated holes in varying sizes that allow for the passage of variable amounts of light. She alters each image to suit her vision, sometimes modifying the tone, perspective, and framing. Like photography, Furunes generates permanent images via the effects of light on a surface, though here the light remains unfixed and in constant dialogue with the surrounding environment.