Bjørn-Sigurd Tufta

Bjørn-Sigurd Tufta is a much noted figure in Norwegian painting. Like many of his generation, he expresses a deep fascination for nature and the landscape painting tradition. Over the last twenty years he has developed a western Norwegian landscape based on Modernism’s simplified pictorial language in combination with the conceptual apparatus of Postmodernism. Tufta’s breakthrough came in the 1980s, a decade marked by international debates on the possibilities and prospects of painting. This was a time when concepts like 'appropriation', 'conceptuality', 'adaptation' and 'deconstruction' were heavily deployed in the artworld, and when painters such as Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke spearheaded a rejuvenation of the art of painting.

Tufta was not impervious to the international discussions, but in Norway he was initially perceived as a pure modernist and categorized in a Norwegian painting tradition dating back to Olav Strømme, a painter of western Norway. Informal painting and artists such as Piere Soulages and Antonio Tápies have also been linked with Tufta. In addition, his motifs are sometimes associated with Romanticism’s sublime landscapes. This association Tufta himself has encouraged by using Toteninsel, a painting by the late German Romantic Arnold Böcklin, almost as an emblem in many of his works. Yet it is not an external landscape Tufta communicates. He painstakingly explores nature through formal pictorial means and the possibilities the pictorial surface affords; he builds structures and light effects and investigates the weight of dark colours. All these elements merge into indirect depictions of nature.

The exhibited painting 12 Paysage x 4 (1996-97) has a dark, perceptibly gloomy yet beautiful monochromatic surface. The Astrup Fearnley Collection’s holdings include two more similarly-titled works from this series, first shown in the exhibition ‘Porta Sacra’ at Gallery K in 1997. The word paysage in the title recalls the standardized French format for horizontal landscapes. The French painting tradition also has standardized formats for still-life and figure painting. 12 Paysage denotes a 92 x 122 cm format. This is the starting point for a series of monochrome landscapes composed of four smaller stretched canvases – 12 Paysage x 4. Tufta lived in Paris while making these pictures, and clearly was inspired by the traditions of French culture and history, incorporating them as conceptual references in his painterly discourse.

The exhibited painting exemplifies Tufta’s fascination with surface treatments, and the heavy, uneven surfaces represent a 'maximization' of sorts but in a minimalist idiom. On the four canvases, oil paint is laid in thick layers. The paint is then scraped and new layers are added. This method creates intriguing colour shades and relief effects. Although the picture is dark, it seems imbued with a light that is trying to push out through the dark surface. It could be understood as Tufta’s abstracted thoughts about forms, expressions and impressions in nature. There is a meditative, almost religious dimension to Tufta’s work, one which recurs in his intimate dialogue with the history of painting.

GÅ