Like many people around the world in times of covid-19, lockdowns drove Line Gulsett indoors. As an artist you must work with what you have. With art materials hard to get her hands on while being secluded in rural Norway, Gulsett turned to what was laying around: small canvases and lots of nail polish. This was the beginning of the exhibition Co-We-Do, a collection of thoughts put to canvas that were developed during the pandemic, on show in the office of TORCH Gallery.
These unconventional paintings represent the things we arguably missed the most while stuck inside: being free to move around, enjoying nature, meeting other people. Collected are a few recent series of works, moving around between brightness and darkness, between pessimism and optimism. There is loneliness and hopelessness in a number of pieces that face inward, visualising the insecurity: when would this misery end? Others are vibrant memories of festive moments and gatherings, reminiscent in style of vintage Hollywood. Nothing says 'party' like glossy nail polish. A third series of paintings on copper plates, created when the world started to open up again, are literally and figuratively the brightest: the golden hue represents a new golden age.
About the artist
In her often large-scale paintings, Line Gulsett (1981, Norway) creates a macabre aesthetic by suggesting movement and obscuring her characters' faces and features. Her painted environments are simultaneously an exploration of oil paint and a suggestion of a dream landscape. Gulsett graduated from the KABK (Royal Academy for Visual Arts) in The Hague in 2011. She has exhibited in the Netherlands and abroad, and has done residencies in Los Angeles (US) and Leipzig (DE). After an extended stay in the Netherlands, Gulsett moved back to Norway in 2020.
