Bright / young (1): Gitte Möller in the making
This month, we have two exceptional Meet-in-the-making editions ready for the taking.
Besides that fact that both artists in question are emerging talents under the age of 30, they also share an incredible knack for colour – vivid, luminescent, undeniable colour that plays a fundamental role in their respective practices. So, in studio, one of our chief tasks was to do justice to – and even further amplify – this arresting aspect of their work.
First up is Gitte Maria Möller, whose initial collaboration with us back in 2017 was the literally brilliant ‘Notes on a stoney heart’. Her second print with us signposts significant development in her career.
As with all Meet-in-the-making prints, ‘Home Sweet Home’ originated from Möller’s sketchbook and is based on the colour pencil drawings she made during her lockdown-induced, protracted stay in New York last year. The distinctive glow was achieved by screen printing colour layers of pencil texture over one another, echoing the effect produced when colouring with pencils in layers. But the colourfast nature of screen printing makes for a particularly satisfying result, as the pencil sketches themselves are not archival.
Here, Möller describes the sketches that preceded the five-colour screen print:
‘The intricacy and intensity of my work when rendered in oil paint can, at times, feel detached or cold, but here, my work becomes softer and more intimate through the relatively raw medium of pencil crayon. Between the black flames and spikes, contrasted with bright pinks and reds, an open book shows us two “fallen angels”, and a childlike drawing on the wall at the centre of the print depicts a lonely stick figure and a house. As with medieval religious painting, the strong perspective in the picture wants to lead us up and out (and into heaven), but the “frame” forces us back down into a pink cage, like we’re stuck in some kind of angsty teenage purgatory. In my efforts to create a union between my inner and outer reality, I reveal a world that exists somewhere between heaven and hell, the forgiving and the punitive, and ultimately, joy and pain.’
