Resharpe
Tekst Heike Arndt
Visual artist Lillian Presthus incorporates Norwegian textile ornamentation into her works. The basis for her paintings is highly personal: the use of old family photographs and, not least, the patterns from the Norwegian textile tradition draw clear lines to her own heritage.
She hails from one of the leading areas in Norwegian textile industry, Ytra Arna, located outside Bergen. She integrates traditional Norwegian craftsmanship into her works, elevating typical ornamentation to a contemporary and universal expression. In a sense, she deconstructs the original harmony only to recreate it in a modified form of new meaning, order, and balance: unknown faces are transformed into familiar acquaintances, and Norwegian patterns become a universal artistic expression.
The deconstructive technique and the palette’s alternation between saturated color concentrates and pastels give Presthus’ paintings a sensitive and striking expression. Despite the motifs’ classical forms and the traditional way of depicting her homeland, the paintings possess a modern touch.
The patterns function both as dynamic and abstract structures and as a play with the painting's immediate two-dimensionality. In this way, Presthus continues the modernist tradition and its exploration of the possibilities and limitations of painting – absolutely worth seeing.These paintings have been taken out of the studio, meant for change and new significance.