Matbordet, 2008
Louis Dorph (1979, SE)
Trained at Royal University of Fine Arts, Stockholm
Lives and works in Stockholm
Louise Dorph is one of the youngest of the participating artists, and only completed her final art training term this spring. Her painting has nevertheless a clearly distinct and consistent style. It is striking to observe how the different fields of colour are kept rigidly separate without any tendency to merge. Her style can be reminiscent of Latin American mural art, of children’s picture books or even inlaid woodwork. Her colours are often few in numbers, restrained and saturated. Her subject matter can be taken from Swedish landscape scenes, frequently a coastal scene with rocky slopes, boats and hoisted sails.
Louise Dorph spent the greater part of her childhood in Africa and in her painting she reveals her interest in how past and contemporary times can be experienced as both vividly present and yet as something abstract. She works too with mural art. Her pictures are always figurative but markedly simplified with much information cut away in order to stress the essential in her subject.
Earlier works by Louise Dorph were often characterised by the absence of people but in the more recent works on show here in the Göteborg Konsthall we note groups of people in all of them. They almost resemble stylised holiday images from the fifties with a family posed in front of their car. They all wear identical clothes as if to indicate that they belong together.
Skylten (‘The Signboard’), 2008
Acrylic on mdf, 44 x 30 cm
Pussen (‘The Kiss’), 2008
Acrylic on mdf, 44 x 30 cm
Vid garaget (‘At the Garage’), 2008
Acrylic on mdf, 44 x 30 cm
Matbordet (‘The Dining Table’), 2008
Acrylic on mdf, 44 x 30 cm
Gäster (‘Guests’), 2008
Acrylic on mdf, 44 x 30 cm
Bilarna (‘The Cars’), 2008
Acrylic on mdf, 44 x 30 cm