LIN UTZON
Sol y Mar
25.03.23 – 01.06.23
From the very beginning natural forms were present in Lin Utzon’s art, but after the education she received at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sydney, where she studied sculpture and painting, she had a hard time finding her true direction. Before returning to Denmark at the age of 20, her parents had given Lin and her brother Jan the experience of a three-month residency in Japan. In Japan, she had surveyed and mapped temples and gained a strong impression of a culture to which she felt a strong affinity. She was particularly drawn to the Japanese approach to the visual environment, admiring the simplicity and cleanliness of the Japanese palette, the perfection of Noh and Kabuki theatre, as expressed in its symbol-laden costumes. The Japanese experience added an extra dimension to Lin’s spiritual and artistic horizon.
In her series Sol y Mar, Lin honours this complex simplicity through forms that evoke movement and natural elements such as waves in a rough or calmer sea or the red light of a sunset contemplated from her house on the south-east coast of Mallorca using a palette of rough colours through which the viewer can feel the power of a wild sea. All this elements merge into the abstract plane of her paintings, creating figures and shapes reminiscent of the Japanese motifs that have so influenced the artist's world.
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