Mette Tommerup

ARTIST STATEMENT

Raw uncut canvases and pigments, the foundation of my recent works, came from the sea and the earth. The rawness of the materials marked by these natural elements offer viewers entry to an underpainting of tactile corporality. With prop-like landforms, the exhibition spaces transform into stages leading the audience to constructions made up of bare essentials and invite them into a world before our collective conscience. They can activate entire rolls of canvases that are in dialogue with stretched work creating a sense of liberation and play. This carefully designed mythos aims to empower the participants to examine established constructs and tackle challenges in society.

This performative story began years ago with a narrative of how my miniature seascape paintings, with humble wills of their own and capable of conscious choice returned to their source—the sea. In subsequent shows, Ocean Loop and Love, Ur, the narrative grew, and the paintings returned and explored life on land. For the upcoming Made by Dusk, the paintings have their sight on the sky, specifically dusk, when light turns to darkness. This performance furthers the concept of paintings as “actors in their own right” as they push for reconfiguration through process and abstraction.

BIO

Mette Tommerup (born Denmark 1969) is a painter and storyteller who creates simultaneously earnest and satirical narratives to frame her production of objects, whether they are digital or made from canvas and paint. Tommerup has exhibited at The Bass, Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), and The FIU Frost Museum of Art and has work in many public and private collections, including work in the permanent collection of Wilmer Hale in Washington DC, the Lowe Art Museum, and Perez Art Museum Miami.  Honors include acquisition of work through the Art Purchase Program at The American Academy of Arts and Letters in NYC. Publications include Miami Contemporary Artists, Miami Arts Explosion, 100 Degrees in the Shade, and Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze and exhibitions have been reviewed in Art in America, Artnet.com, The Miami Herald as well as mentions in the New York Times. Made by Dusk is Tommerup’s first commission at a nonprofit alternative space. Tommerup received an MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1995. Mette Tommerup is represented by Emerson Dorsch Gallery.

ARTIST LINKS

Website: mettetommerup.com

Instagram: @mettetommerup