Geir Stadheim: Extended Landscape

Geir Stadheim is a visual storyteller. His fables, full of characters that could belong to both nightmares or joyful dreaminess, are echoes of some unknown mythologies. And it would be a challenge to fit them into a descriptive frame. Mostly because his paintings are like moving images, where numerous details display the essential strength and simulate entrance into an intimidating yet appealing world of imagination: one outside of familiar guiding rules and definitions. Stadheim’s works are rich with mixed playfulness of symbols and surreal elements, such as dark skies, large puffy clouds, naked trees, strange beings, or bizarre buildings. They encourage spectators to dive into them without presumptions. His firm brushstrokes and intense colours,  together with seemingly chaotic accumulations remain connected to each other, creating auras of continuity and fluidity embedded in the paintings. It is more or less irrelevant what they really tell about. The connectivity in these works propels the spectators to the movement inward and to the feeling of connection to its own freedom of imagination. That spacial connectivity is the core of Stadheim´s visual fables, as it opens the possibility for endless interpretations. And all the variety of potential perceptions assert the relevance of an existential awareness: that is presence in any form or time, space and reality – connected. Stadheim´s paintings do not seek to be understood or interpreted. They instead encourage the spectators to rendezvous with them in the mode of their own emotional surrender. – Renata Maiblum

Extended Landscape is a series of paintings done in a combination of field-studies and atelier-work. I’ve picked fragments , sketches and drawings, from one of my many field notes done in nature and combined this with the “artificial light” of dreams and improvisations done in the studio. The resulting effect is often a “door within a door”, that is to say, the door to the painting contains another door away from it. The drawings of nature leads to the imaginary world of shapes and colors , at the same time, depending on your starting view, the painted world becomes a gateway to the real. – Geir Stadheim

Kilde: Renata Maiblum Gallery