LOVE AND DARKNESS
Morning altar, oil on canvas, 180 x 150 cm, 2018
TEXT, GITTE SÆTRE
ARTIST AND CURATOR
BERGEN
Carl Martin Hansen's work creates associations to struggle, a conflict unfolding in image, created with the techniques the artist has mastered, as well as tone and atmosphere - despite the fact that they in no way appear as aggressive or macabre. It is the combination of works and space that Carl Martin creates that provides me, the observer, with a space to put myself and the world into.
Included and excluded gestures encourage thought and association. Observer senses are instantly activated in meeting the artist's universe.
We stand and consider the struggle between opposites. Is this what Plato meant when he said that war is necessary for a civilization to progress? Thoughts are pulled in the direction of human suffering and material destruction, all the traumatic that becomes a part of us and of the future. Must it be so, can warfare change its shape so radically that it is not about destroying but about developing and caring? If so, what do we have to depend on for that to happen?
What is it that these works try to share?
There is no fear in them, maybe that is the essence, we have to discard fear and look life in the eye.
We see a vibrating space set into fields, some remain untreated while others display a distinct materiality. Lines form movement and rhythm, colours create a variety of voices that take different directions, sounds occur, you find yourself moving in the space, you want to go back and forth, you close in and smell, you take a few steps backwards to get an overview, you are compelled to touch your body and discover that the works have entered physically somewhere. It all happens quite quickly but the chaos remains absent.
It may seem that through his choice of expression, Carl Martin holds the observer in the palm of his hand. The clearly indistinct holds us prisoner and we are forced to think for ourselves. Then, when we've thought for a while, these nonfigurative works become a kind of altar.
A concentrated surface of life unfolding, death, resurrection, love and greed - all within this familiar, terrible, beautiful drama. We close our eyes and watch darkness pierce the light.
I go to the bookshelf and pick out the small but profound book by Toril Moi, “Language and attention”. The book discusses morality and how morality is affected by inadvertent language. The author questions how we should talk about what we see, in order to truly understand each other. Moral judgment and world understanding require "a fair and loving gaze". It might be that Carl Martin has this gaze in his lines. He examines - and then having invested time in the examination, he takes a stand – while he simultaneously accommodates the rest of us by creating new space and surface. Through slow and quiet reflection, and an incorruptible loyalty to the material that he explores.
We experience an artist who recognises the seriousness of art meeting the world, the relational self, and in this recognition it is the relational self as caretaker. And what is it he wants us to take care of? I think the secret lies in the artist's inspiration; nature and environment. What lies there every day we wake up and look out the window at the landscape, the city, the people....there is someone talking to us in a language that can open new paths, we only have to dare to listen.
Gitte Sætre, august 2014.