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Press rewiev Aarhus
Stiftstidende af Henrik Broch-Lips
Snow has a fantastic ability to make
both the world and time stand still. When the white powder lies
over playing fields and lawns, children stop playing and adults
suspend their outdoor activities. We can be moved by the beautiful
panorama covered by snow but only remembrances of summer activities
are left in the memory.
It is precisely this deadening effect and metaphysical power of
snow which has compelled the American artist Lisa M. Robinson to
travel about the North American winter with her camera for a number
of years. That it has been worth all efforts is evident the moment
you enter Galleri Image. Here you meet a series of very poetic photographs
that reproduce one landscape after another covered by snow. But
none of Robinson's images are purely descriptive of nature. Always
emerging from the snow is a human-made, cultural element inside
her white painted frames: a fence, a table, a basketball basket
or just a rope tied to a birch.
The worthy photographs are very simple in composition. In the tightest
and most purified images the three-dimensional reality is transformed
into pure two-dimensional and timeless, flat structure by the 38
year-old photograph. Obviously, the winter motives are not colourful
and therefore seem monochromatic and meditative.
It is not too much to call Robinson's fascinating images an artistic
research project. In this sense all the photographs are necessary
though I was most attracted to the motives with the characteristic
colourful sheds which enthusiastic anglers pull out on the frozen
lakes in the northern USA. It is a curious custom that perhaps is
best remembered from the comedy "Grumpy Old Men" with
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in the leading roles.
Robinson's minimalistic and sharp images have a lot in common with
Japanese haiku poetry and therefore the poet and artist Astrid Gjessing
is reading classical haiku verses in Galleri Image this Friday at
20:30.
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