Artists

Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan

Press release

Galleri Maria Friis is pleased to invite you to the opening of Alt forladt (Bygones Goodbye), the second solo exhibition by Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan in the gallery. The exhibition features paintings on canvas and cotton paper, alongside a selection of photographic works. The works explore themes of lost dreams, grief, and silent struggles. The exhibition is accompanied by a poem by Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan.

There is violence in these paintings – balancing between the figurative and the abstract. In some works animals are in labor, but the births have gone wrong. A mother turns to face her newborn, but it is just an unrecognizable liquid streaming from her belly. Coiling Medusa’s snakes echoing the twisting arms of an octopus are both erotic, unsettling, strange and ancient. What is a woman, what is an animal, a mother, a monster?

In Danish Alt forladt is a common phrase which figuratively speaking means “all is forgiven”. In a more literal reading it means “all is left behind”. Interested in this ambivalent doubleness Lind-Valdan works with the phrase in both ways. Working around deliverance through pain, towards forgiveness, recovering from physical and emotional hurt.