Stavanger, Norway
For all the changes in art over the past one hundred years, we are still so conventional when it comes to hanging paintings. They go on a wall, one side up, and should generally be perpendicular to the ground. And yet, Trove Sundt-Hansen has produced two 90-cm square canvases that announce no particular orientation. One is of a poppy, seen from above, and even though the artist presents it one way, it really could be any. As for the other composition, well, Sundt-Hansen has just turned it 90 degrees to the right. That changes everything, reorienting the two depicted figures so that they are no longer lying one atop the other but instead one rightside up, the other upside down. If she were to continue, they would lie down again, but with a different person on top; then they would be vertical but oppositely, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. Those positions connote very different relationships between two people, here depicted in an emotional palette of pinks and purples, caressed with wide, curved, sweeping brushstrokes. Which orientation is correct—and also, what about diagonals? Perhaps the problem is not with this changeability but with our bias towards the vertical. If pictures were shown on the ground, to be freely circulated, there would be no issue.
—Lori Waxman, March 18, 3:55 PM