Mosegrodd
Morten Slettemeas at Telemarksgalleriet
In Mosegrodd, Morten Slettemeas combines and juxtaposes mediums and materials to add texture to the theme of Norwegian contemporary identity as shaped by the historical and ever-evolving phenomena such as human mobility, migration, and the act of settling. By showing works in oil, others in watercolor on paper, and also borrowed folk historical objects, the artist seems to be addressing the true nature of contemporary identity through its many layers, the understanding that identity stems from a cumulative growth rather than a process of distillation—a plethora of happenings carved by the passing of the ages, the cultural appropriation inherent to it, as well as human mobility in the form of migration. Slettemeas chooses to render this understanding with a complexity that cannot overlook theendless, simple gestures left behind in the nuances of everyday life.
The works in watercolor are true testament of this capturing of the immediate and the mundane: a material that allows him no more than an instant to complete a stroke—something akin to a wine stain, rapidly soaking into the fabric, leaving its trace. The first instance in the narrative in which we journey as viewers in Mosegrodd is the realization of the ethereal import of the moment as an element that builds identity.
When shifting to the works in oil, and its complexity in terms of material and technique, Slettemeas is adding the following conceptual layer in compositions that are multifarious, that demand careful editing, layers of oil like layers of the self in an environment already bearing the marks of those who set foot there before—the subjects, like Slettemeas, tread over previous, indelible marks. The artist asks of the viewer something akin to memory-as-foundation as a crucial element of identity. Furthermore, the use of oil as a material as cast in this abstract light suggests movement, a device that also becomes clear with his use of borrowed historical objects for the show.
Employing his usual selective approach, Slettemeas pairs his own work with woodcuts, furniture and historical decorative objects that utilize the acanthus plant as a central subject—a plant that epitomizes migration and cultural appropriation, as well as national identity in Norway specifically. Not endemic to Scandinavia, the acanthus is known to have been a decorative element in Ancient Greece and in the Roman Empire before its symbolic appropriation in Bavaria and Scandinavia, begging the question if whether the idea of what is labelled “genuine” of place can shift. If it can be fortuitous and random.
It is only by zooming out, embracing every piece in the show as viewers, that we realize it is the subjects in the works that complete narrative. While some of the paintings and watercolors depict images of nature in a style that bears some resemblance to the still-life, others represent people who seem to have been caught in an instant that seems to hold both transcendence and nothing at all. This is the artist asking us not to overlook the simplicity and layered quality of our every experience and those that came before us—that which edifies us and that has edified our shared pasts and backgrounds. This cumulative effect suggests the stringing of experience, the ongoing weaving of identity, from micro-gestures that build onto mutating whole.
With these works, Slettemeas returned to Telemark, a place that once throbbed with the question of Norwegian identity. It is from where the Telemark painters once travelled to reunite with the so-called “genuine” elements of Norwegian culture that Slettemeas subverts the context of national identity, and pays a tribute to the ever shifting qualities of the present and the past, all the while ignoring the plausible and imagined trajectories of the future.
Diego Gerard, Mexico City, 2019