Featured Artist
Ketil Eriksen

Ketil Eriksen is a visual artist based in Denmark. Beginning to approach art at a young age, he only later became a professional artist, participating in several group exhibitions in Austria, Italy, Germany, Sweden, UAE, Switzerland, China, Spain and the USA. His artistic research focuses on shapes and colors, as well as gestural and instinctive force, applying compositional research. The resulting abstractionism hints at an ambiguity: on the one hand, the immediacy of gesture emerges; on the other hand, the harmonious compositions hint at premeditation and thus one might assume a “reasoned randomness”.

The titles of Ketil Eriksen’s works on canvas make these statements explicit: they are titled “Composition”, emphasizing the importance the artist himself attaches to visual harmony and weights. In fact, the canvases in most cases present a white and neutral background against which the acrylic strokes stand out and become protagonists. Black is the dominant and recurring color in all the works. The artist makes immediate, quick and forceful gestures, drawing on the Abstract Expressionist painting of the master Jackson Pollock. Black is always placed in dialogue with one or two colors, often primary, with which the artist plays to create a layering that creates a certain depth. The choice of color conveys a message, a symbology, which becomes subjective and free to be interpreted by each individual viewer.

The strength of black on the white canvas inevitably refers to Zen Buddhist art and in particular its ideology: one stroke the ink brushstroke that draws the circle is traced on silk or rice paper in a single gesture, without any possibility of change or correction, thus showing the expressive movement of the spirit, at that precise moment. Likewise, Ketil Eriksen’s art encapsulates a precise emotion, a precise energy that is returned to the audience to be shaped and reshaped in a personal way by everyone.

In the process of creating individual works, the inspiration comes primarily from colors, shapes, patterns and nature. It is also the emotional moods, thoughts, impressions and the play of contrast that guide him through his paintings. His paintings are a Universe that comes from within and that arises naturally. He likes to leave the interpretation/feeling at the meeting with my paintings up to the individual viewer.

more. www.ketileriksen.com