Anders Bonnesen's new body of works entitled Pieces of the Sky does a relatively simple thing, although the result may not be that simple; Bonnesen has bought various older paintings and cut and adjusted them – like the function called “crop” in image processing programs. What remains is the portion of the sky that was visible, undisturbed in the original painting, framed by the original frame. In some cases, the area of the image is smaller than that of the frame. In some cases, the image is almost a monochrome surface. But in all cases, these are images saturated with meaning.
Before, the skies formed backgrounds for landscapes, farms, cities, lakes, castles, grazing cows and sheep, sailing ships, etc. Now the sky is naturally the central focus, but perhaps in reality it has always been so. It was the houses etc that formed the background for the sky, and not the other way around. We just ignored the wrong thing. The original painters were perhaps not even aware that their greatest intensity lay in the upper part of the painting, that the lower part was just structure.
It is a common metaphor to think of paintings, and especially this type of painting, as a kind of window. Here, the window frames have surely become smaller, but the view has surely become greater.
Considered as a series of works, it is of course the conceptual approach, the shift in focus, that is interesting. Considered as individual works, the paintings each have their own qualities. Some of them become almost cinematic, like when you look at the clouds drifting by in the sky in boredom/amazement/thoughtlessness/satisfaction.
We attribute a whole lot to the sky. We paint pictures of it and write songs about it. The Emmylou Harris quote above points to the faith and anxiety we send up there / get from up there, while the Brian Eno quote points to the drifting time and what one is constantly connected to, no matter how dis-interested. The following piece of a pop song points to an instinctive image criticism, but also to the feeling of weightlessness one must surrender to, in the company of clouds:
I woke up on a 747
Flying through some stock footage of heaven
This is the light right here
Before clouds bittersweet and with suggestion
Flying through some stock footage of heaven
This is the light right here
Before clouds bittersweet and with suggestion
This is the light
Bill Callahan, 474
Kilde:
Euismod Tellus Magna
Euismod Tellus Magna
