VOLTA5 -- Kira Wager 'Solo Show Paintings'    Jun 8 - Jun 13, 2009

Stand: F4
Markthalle, Viaduktstrasse 10
4054 Basel

The Norwegian artist Kira Wager (b. 1971) finds her world of images from family photo albums and her own private snapshots. The pictures are intuitively chosen and transformed into paintings on PVC-boards.

The photographs are formed into a grid that she covers up. Using different kinds of techniques, she depicts each square with thin layers of oil paint. The result is paintings where adjoining sections don’t quite match up. This devided surface creates an illusion of movements.

The tension between the figurative and the abstract gives off a multifaceted commotion that make her art difficult to pigeonhole. The works are both conceptual and just ”simple” depictions from photographs. - ”I have no photorealistic ambitions. With different levels of abstraction I make painterly interpretations of the pictures’ visual images,” says Wager.

Moving beyond the narrow range of pigments from earlier work, Wager works now with a multitude of pigments. She also interprets photography and painting more freely as related mediums.

Artists and critics have for several decades declared the painting as dead, but through thorough investigation, - Wager reflects, scrutinizes and tries continuously to find new ways to evolve traditional painting.

Wager has exhibited at a wide range of different galleries and artinstitutions in the Nordic countries and USA. She is also represented in different public and private collections such as the National Museum of Art, Norway, The Norwegian Arts Council, Nordea Bank Art Collection, The Norwegian Bank, Storebrand, Norsk Hydro and Statoil.