Sol Kjøk is a Norwegian
artist currently living in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York, where
she is surrounded by peers who have come from all over the world
to be artists. Interestingly, her sharp-eyed, insightful drawing
does not belong to a particular culture; it is part of the Western
tradition. It seems to profit from broadly accepted international
languages of contemporary art, despite the fact that, given KjøkÕs
acute skills, the work continues the long history of Western figurative
art. Her process connects her with current art practiceÑshe
begins by staging performances in her studio, where she and others
carry out Òpotentially painful acrobatic exercises, such as
walking a tightrope, climbing ropes, or juggling, dribbling, or
balancing on balls.Ó
Kjøk shoots photographs for source shots and then cuts them
up, rearranging them into collages, which become the basis for her
drawings and paintings. The final works are wonderful, sensuous
renditions of the human body, the red balls providing moments of
visual focus, no matter whether they are small or large. Kjøk
often heaps the bodies together, so that legs and arms and heads
overlap each other in a cheerful grab bag of forms. Naked bodies,
male and female, balance on top of each other, gripping each other
in a sensuous, close to sexual fashion. In most of the works, there
are strings of red-hued beads, which offer the only note of color
in KjøkÕs black-and-white compositions; they function
as highlights for works that are focused on communicating the mysteries
and beauty of the unclothed body.
There is in KjøkÕs art an appreciation of the old and
the new; she employs the long tradition of figure drawing but is
determined, at the same time, to take part in the esthetic of her
time. Her series ÒStrings of BeadsÓ is very much a physical,
indeed a sensual, reading of the current art culture, and she is
particularly accomplished in rendering the human body as the base
of human relations and communication. Her technical ability is remarkable,
so much so that she attains an allegorical impact in her art, which
speaks to the human condition in a vernacular that willingly respects
the dignity of the body. It is also appropriate to comment on the
figuresÕ lively energy; these are not mere academic studies,
but bodies evidencing a serious reading of life. Nonetheless, a
sense of play enlivens the gravitas of the images, so that both
historical awareness and contemporary fun results. Kjøk speaks
to several worlds at onceÑhence the high pleasure of her art.
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