DINA ISÆUS-BERLIN
EVENTS AT POINT ZERO
OPENING MARCH 11
FROM 12 — 4 PM
Dina Isæus-Berlin’s practice is an ongoing investigation of artistic making. By the means of large scale, bodily, paintings, she aims at answering the question on what it means to drag something out in the existing. To Dina Isæus-Berlin, painting as method is a satisfying way to explore this theme since the painting process becomes a hands-on recording of her actions and decisions along the way. All movements have consequences, leaving traces one needs to relate and respond to.
The conditions for this making are important, and Dina Isæus-Berlin keeps careful track of them, analyzing their effects on her practice. When she is to paint, she tries to be a point zero, in a place without expectations. In that place she can surprise herself. Dina Isæus-Berlin calls this an Event. When an Event occurs she describes it as a relief within the process, like everything is starting anew, making space for new opportunities and points of departure. It’s an unexpected skip in the making process and in the responding to it, that is the act of painting.
According to Dina Isæus-Berlin, the Event can be mediated through the painting and if the work is made without intellectual or theoretical labels, then it’s more likely for the observer to have a wordless encounter with the Event as well as the piece as a whole. The possibility to replace spoken words with observing is a potential for art - the words will come sooner or later but in the first encounter there is a possibility to pause the constant flow of instructions and thoughts that dominate our lives. A sense of space is made room for.
In contrast to Dina Isæus-Berlin’s fast, intuitive way of working she has lately allowed herself to step back and let a slower and more analytic way of relating to the surface be a way to care for, or comment, the Event. This change of rhythm has sometimes been represented in the paintings as physical shapes such as a rectangle or a straight line. Dina Isæus-Berlin’s use of rough materials is exposed in a straight forward way, where the materials are representing themselves and making no excuses. The paint acts like paint and the board looks like board.
In Dina Isæus-Berlin’s new works, under the connecting title ”Events at Point Zero” she has more than ever pushed herself to gestural freedom, by trying to detach limits and peel off expectations. The painting can look however, as long as an Event has occurred.
”What are the ideal circumstances for the Event?” she asks herself. “To get there, you need to give up, be at point zero - with no future and no past. Then any direction is possible and the risks are no longer risks.”
Dina Isæus-Berlin (b. 1991) is based in Stockholm where she is currently doing her BFA at University College of Arts, Crafts and Design.
Namn: Dina Isæus-Berlin
Datum: 03/11/2017 Plats: Karlavägen 5
Datum: 03/11/2017 Plats: Karlavägen 5