Seven Composistions for Hellesen, 2023
Sjøfartsbygningen, Rådhusgata 13, Oslo
Print on window film mounted on seven large windows outside and inside Sjøfartsbygningen in Oslo.

For the Maritime Building in Oslo, Anders Sletvold Moe has created seven compositions as a tribute to Norway's "forgotten cubist", Thorvald Hellesen. Sletvold Moe has taken Hellesen's work Dansere (1925) as his starting point and developed an art project that spans seven window fields in the building where Dansere was also originally thought to be a permanent work. The dance uses the body as an instrument. Its dynamic power, beauty and vivid expression lend themselves as motifs to art. In Thorvald Hellesen's work Dansere (1925), hard and soft lines meet and create the forms of two dancing couples. The work is composed around a slightly displaced central axis and has a clear vertical orientation in fields that seem derived from the dancers' straight forms. The tightness of the overall impression is softened by the diagonals and semicircular shapes that create dynamic interactions, and emphasize dance as a motif. Elements of red, blue and green further accentuate the energy and liveliness that Hellesen adds to the geometric shapes. In the work Seven compositions for Hellesen, the figurative plan cubism of Hellesen is transformed into a completely abstract painting - from left to right like an art historical timeline. It can be said that the work from 1920s French modernism in Paris moves towards a pure abstract surface for each window, which was typical of what happened in New York in the 1950s-60s. With American artists such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman at the forefront, New York took over the role of the most important art metropolis in the post-war period. Initially, Sletvold Moe tightens up Hellesen's curved lines and semicircular shapes, but retains the central axis all the way to the sixth window field. Sletvold Moe leads a gradual reduction of the color palette which emphasizes pink, red and orange over colder tones such as blue and green. The final expression is hard-boiled and minimalist, reduced all the way down to a black monochrome surface with a frame around it. Image can also, despite its simple composition, be read as a stylized image of a darkened window with a window frame, not unlike the architectural framework the windows in the maritime building form as the frame for Sletvold Moe's homage to Hellesen's artwork.

Like Hellesen, Sletvold Moe emphasizes an interest and understanding of art integrated in architecture. Sletvold Moe is genuinely interested in both modernist art history and the further development of an abstract formal language in art, also outside the traditional boundaries of painting. In this way he is fortified both in his own time, at the same time as he relates both actively and reflectively to the history of abstract art. This is clearly shown in the artwork Seven compositions for Hellesen.

Commissioned by Mesén Kulturbyrå for Eckbos Legat.
Curator: Vibeke Christensen, Mesén Kulturbyrå
Photos: Tor S. Ulstein