Anders Wahlstedt Fine Art is pleased to present LIV METTE LARSEN: Milori Blue. This is Larsen’s second solo exhibit with the Gallery. On view are twenty-six egg tempera paintings created entirely in 2023 from three distinct series––Milori Blue 57th Street, Raw Umber, and Open Strokes, as well as some watercolors from the Arma Scrap Metal series. While this body of work slightly diverges from Larsen’s previous show, Nightview (2022), it nonetheless pays tribute to the artist’s longstanding practice rooted in abstraction.
With Milori Blue, Larsen continues her tradition of rendering organic geometric forms from objects and landscapes she encounters in her everyday life. The show title takes its name from the color pigment used by the artist as a recurring motif in the series Milori Blue 57th Street to depict the skyscrapers that occupy Manhattan’s 57th Street. By taking such real-world matters then abstracting and translating them onto a canvas for exhibition and inspection, Larsen succeeds in re-contextualizing what otherwise tends to be easily disregarded. Consequently, she invents a novel subjective reality––one in which monochromatic structures alluding to silhouettes of buildings dynamically tower over the viewer and dramatically contorting shapes suspend themselves against flat backdrops made up of saturated yellows, oranges, and greens.
In the process of constructing her narrative of reality, Larsen naturally invites our participation. Larsen’s anti-representational mode of working enables the artist to effectively displace the subject matter from their origin and the viewer to impart new meanings to the works by drawing upon their personal interpretations and emotional responses. For instance, in Raw Umber X (2023), a brown pillar-like shape stretches diagonally across the linen canvas painted mustard yellow. At first glance, the piece seemingly depicts an urban high-rise hovering over the viewer as with many others created by Larsen. However, closer viewings then give rise to a myriad of possibilities: a chimney peeking out from the rooftop of a suburban home, an elongated shadow imprinted on the ground, an upside-down view of the leg of a wooden chair, et cetera. The search for meaning therefore becomes a unique introspective experience for each individual viewer, with no answer being the right answer.
To draw from reality then question and dispute it to make way for something beautiful to emerge––such is the true power of Larsen’s paintings.
