Heidi Fosli

Heidi Fosli

Figurative abstraction of Heidi Fosli - New York, 2018

av Dan Aldo

By Dan Aldo The overriding subject of the work by Heidi Fosli exhibited at Artifact is a human condition within Nature. It is seen as the manifestation of a unifying spirit that precedes and often precludes the observer. It is a reality removed from the everyday, away from the prosaic. These elements in Fosli's work celebrate the awareness of humbleness and the mystery that is to be found in the everyday.

The artist uses scale shifts in order to arouse within us a sense of the sublimeness and infinite potential. The key to these paintings is their resourcefulness and deceptive simplicity, which resonate with primal contrasts and oppositions within each composition. This tension of opposites which leads to the excellence of form-making in the artist’s painterly works is the result of a harmonious fusion of object presented, the object suggested, and, through image evoked, the “thing” expressed.

The artist succeeded in her painterly goals of transcending time and space while still adhering to the here and now. This superimposition of the timely and the timeless in her work changes the traditional view of painting as either purely a category of perception or as means to record with some exactitude indexical reality. Thus, Fosli’s work wisely allows us to apprehend her own unique approach in which a Heideggerian impulse to allow the world to “unconceal” itself is the primary, motivating factor in the making of the art. Here, intuitive knowledge is the ordering principle of the world, and the viewer experiences artist’s poetic integrity that charges all of her work with convincing rightness and embody perceptions of figurative abstraction within the body proper of Art.

Heidi Fosli - Italy, 2018

di Vittorio Sgarbi

Non é difficile rinvenire nella norvegese Heidi Fosli alcune componenti tipiche dell’arte moderna d’area scandinava. Partirei della centralità del rapporto con la natura, anche quando non fosse l’oggetto diretto delle rappresentazioni, sul quale si proietta, in diretta relazione con esso, anche quello con il genere umano. Il bisogno, ancestrale, é quello di sentirsi in pace con l’una e con l’altro, nell’intento di ottenerne sufficiente piacere vitale; ma é complicato conseguirlo, perché eventuali difficoltà sul versante delle relazioni sociali finirebbero per ripercuotersi sull’altro (un’infanzia impoverita negli affetti, per esempio, può indurre a farci percepire la natura in modo ostile, come se ci negasse i godimenti più elementari), e viceversa.

Troppo vasta, troppo potente, la natura, per immaginare di stabilire con essa un rapporto da pari a pari: l’unica via a disposizione é il sentimento che di essa si può provare, la ricerca di una condizione emotiva per cui credere di far parte di una stessa famiglia, figli benaccetti di una madre così terribilmente immensa e dispersiva da farci dubitare sul fatto che sia in grado di concepire la generosità d’animo come la intendiamo noi. Così, da seme che vuole sentirsi fratello di milioni di semi, da goccia sorella di miliardi di gocce, la Fosli immagina situazioni vissute come flussi interiori che non distinguono più fra ciò che capita fuori dalla mente e quanto le succede dentro, aspirando all’immersione in un tutto panico entro il cui vortice le cose si sciolgono nelle loro impressioni e si amalgamano reciprocamente come a costituire un nuovo, o forse redivivo brodo primordiale.

Per tradurlo in pittura, la Fosli ricorre a un colore di chiara eredità espressionista, in linea con la migliore tradizione scandinava, estremamente vibratile nell’aggrumarsi a tocchi densi e accostati, quasi da Nabis, caricati di luminescenze distese a pioggia, che evocano fantasmi di figure primordiali o paesaggi in sublime stato di isolamento. le tinte fredde si alternano alle calde come aloni di ghiaccio farebbero con i riverberi di fuochi vulcanici, in un accesso, contrastato, qualche volta spiazzante, ma inappuntabile equilibrio visionario.

Vittorio Sgarbi

It is not difficult to find in the Norwegian Heidi Fosli some of the typical elements of scandinavian modern art. I would start from the centrality of the relationship with nature - even while not being the direct object of the images - on which the directly relating one with mankind is also projected. The ancestral need is of feeling at peace with both, in the aim of obtaining sufficient vital pleasure from them; but this is complicated to attain, because any difficulty in terms of social relationships would eventually affect the other (a loveless childhood, for example, can cause us to perceive nature as hostile, as if it were denying us the most basic pleasures), and vice versa.

Nature is too vast, too powerful for us to imagine establishing a relationship with it as equals: the only solution we have is the feeling we may have of it, the research of an emotional condition for which we may believe we are part of the same family, welcomed children of a mother so terribly immense and dispersive as to make us doubt her ability to conceive good heartedness as we understand it. Thus, like a seed that wants to feel like the brother of millions of seeds, like a drop sister to billions of drops, Fosli imagines situations experienced as inner flows which no longer distinguish between what happens outside the mind and what happens within her, striving for immersion in an irrational whole in which things melt in their impressions and merge together as though making up a new, or maybe returned primordial broth.

Translating this into painting, Fosli resorts to a colour of clear expressionist heritage, in line with the best scandinavian tradition, extremely vibratile in clotting itself into thick and juxtaposed strokes, which are almost Nabis, charged with sprinkling luminescence, evoking ghosts of primordial figures or landscapes in a sublime state of isolation. The cold shades alternate with the warm like ice halos would with the glare of volcanic fires, in a glowing, contrasted, sometimes unsettling, but faultless visionary balance.

Vittorio Sgarbi

Translation/Traduzione: Daniela Fraioli Art Historian and Translator/Storico dell’Arte e Traduttrice

Heidi Fosli - Italy, 2018

di Paolo Levi

La pittura dell’artista norvegese Heidi Fosli sollecita l’osservatore a percorrere sentieri che appartengono agli spazi dell'immaginario, dove l'atmosfera si colora di profili rarefatti e impalpabili grazie a una rigorosa ricerca della funzione espressiva del colore seguendo la teoria goethiana che rivendica la centralità dei sensi dell'uomo nel fare esperienza dell’Arte. Dopo anni di studi e sperimentazioni maturate sia nell’ambito di una famiglia di artisti, che l’Academy of Art University di San Francisco, possiamo oggi definirla maestro d’arte in quanto nelle rappresentazione pittorica è riuscita a raggiungere risultati eccellenti, creando capolavori di indiscusso coinvolgimento emotivo capaci di restituire al pubblico ogni più intima vibrazione del pigmento, ogni palpito tonale.

Le figure che affiorano dall’inarrestabile fluire coloristico, e che ricordano le composizioni di Edvard Munch, nascono autonomamente come presenze evanescenti e con il loro sembiante intessono dialoghi silenti, lambendo l'indefinito confine tra la realtà e l’astrazione. Tramite lo straordinario uso del colore, che va molto oltre la mera ricerca estetica, Heidi Fosli libera eterogenee potenzialità espressive che derivano da un’indagine interiorizzata. È inevitabile provare una sorta di rapimento contemplativo di fronte a questi capolavori che inducono a un quieto raccoglimento davanti alla superficie pittorica in un succedersi di dissolvenze che interpretano momenti vissuti e filtrati dal ricordo come in “Prima ballerina” del 2016, o paesaggi dell’anima verso cui l’artista prova un profondo trasporto emotivo come in “Paradiso in terra” del 2016 e “Collecarino nel mio cuore” del 2015.

L’artista, attraverso una tecnica compositiva di grande suggestione, riesce a produrre contemporaneamente situazioni di energia e di stasi, declinando nell'alternarsi dei colori la dicotomia della forza e della leggerezza. Si ha l’impressione che quello che si vede non rappresenti la circoscritta definizione di un pensiero, bensì il soffio di un respiro, un presagio, un preludio di verità arcane, capace di coinvolgere lo sguardo, accompagnandolo verso lidi sconosciuti, eppure famigliari, popolati da presenze oniriche e da messaggi da decifrare.

Prof. Paolo Levi

The painting by the Norwegian artist Heidi Fosli urges the observer to follow paths that they belong to the spaces of the imaginary, where the atmosphere is colored with rarefied profiles and impalpable thanks to a rigorous research of the expressive function of the following color the Goethian theory that claims the centrality of the senses of man in the experience of art. After years of studies and experiments matured both within a family of artists, and the Academy of Art University of San Francisco, we can today call her a master of art in that in pictorial representation she managed to achieve excellent results, creating masterpieces of undisputed emotional involvement capable of giving back to the public every more intimate vibration of the pigment, each tonal palpitation.

The figures that emerge from the unstoppable flow of color, and that recall the compositions of Edvard Munch, born autonomously as evanescent presences and with their semblant they weave silent dialogues, lapping the indefinite border between reality and abstraction. Through the extraordinary use of color, which goes far beyond mere aesthetic research, Heidi Fosli free heterogeneous expressive potentialities that derive from an internalized investigation. It is inevitable to try a sort of contemplative rapture in the face of these inducing masterpieces to a quiet recollection in front of the pictorial surface in a succession of fades that interpret moments lived and filtered by the memory as in "Prima ballerina" of the 2016, or landscapes of the soul towards which the artist experiences a deep emotional transport as in "Heaven on Earth" of 2016 and "Collecarino nel mio cuore" of 2015.

The artist, through a highly suggestive composition technique, is able to produce at the same time situations of energy and stasis, declining the dichotomy in the alternation of colors of strength and lightness. One gets the impression that what one sees is not representing the circumscribed definition of a thought, but the breath of a breath, an omen, a prelude of arcane truth, capable of involving the gaze, accompanying it towards shores unknown, yet familiar, populated by dreamlike presences and messages to be deciphered.

Prof. Paolo Levi

Maleriet av den norske kunstneren Heidi Fosli oppfordrer observatøren til å følge stier som om de tilhører det imaginære rommet, hvor atmosfæren er farget med sjeldne profiler og ugripelighet takket være en streng undersøkelse av den uttrykksfunksjonelle fargefunksjonen som følger Goetheteorien som hevder at sentraliteten til menneskets sanser ligger i kunstens opplevelse. Etter mange år med studier og eksperimenter modnet både innenfor en kunstnerfamilie, og Academy of Art University i San Francisco, kan vi i dag kalle henne en mester av kunsten ved at hun i billedrepresentasjon klarer å oppnå gode resultater, og skaper mesterverk av ubestridt følelsesmessig engasjement i stand til å gi tilbake til publikum mer og mer intim vibrasjon av pigmentet, hver tonal palpitasjon (hjertebank). Figurene som dukker opp fra den ustoppelige fargestrømmen, og som minner om (gjenkaller) Edvard Munchs komposisjoner, født bevegelige som flyktige tilstedeværelser, og hvor de later som de vever stille dialoger, og skjøter den ubestemte grensen mellom virkelighet og abstraksjon.

Gjennom den ekstraordinære bruken av farge, som går langt utover bare estetisk forskning, gir Heidi Fosli frie heterogene uttrykksfulle potensialer som kommer fra en internalisert undersøkelse. Det er uunngåelig å ikke føle en kontemplativ begeistring i møte med disse induserende mesterverkene til en rolig tilbakekallelse foran bildeoverflaten i en rekke skygger som tolker de levde øyeblikkene og filtrert av minnet som i "Prima Ballerina" i 2016, eller landskap av sjelen som kunstneren opplever en dyp emosjonell transport som i "Heaven on Earth" av 2016 og "Collecarino nel mio cuore" av 2015.

Kunstneren, gjennom en svært suggestiv komposisjonsteknikk, er i stand til å produsere energisituasjoner og statiskhet samtidig, og redusere dikotomi i veksling av farger av styrke og lys. Man får inntrykk av at den som ser, ikke representerer den begrensede definisjonen av en tanke, men pusten av et pust, et omen, et forspill av den sanne sannheten, som er i stand til å involvere blikket, ledsage det mot kysten, ukjent, men kjent, befolket av drømmeaktige hendelser og meldinger som skal deklareres.

Prof. Paolo Levi

Heidi Fosli - The Revolution of Impressionism, Italy, 2016

di Daniela Fraioli Art Historian

Entering the dramatic, but at the same time mysterious and subconscious realm of artist Heidi Fosli is a risk for any art lover, however a necessary one, if the truth still were that the very essence of art is to allow a deeper grasp of reality. The depiction of the dynamics of thoughts, personal interactions and emotions and their effect on our visible reality is possible because the artist fixes upon the canvas the actual result of these very same dynamics in herself, transforming her physical, emotional and psychological experiences into tangibility and concreteness: her artwork.

This transformation takes place in Heidi Fosli’s paintings as a dream in the night, when what was known yesterday is suddenly deconstructed tomorrow and a new truth, difficult to believe at first, is coming to the surface. Her automatic, spontaneously executed paintings allow this emersion, and she herself is often bewildered by the messages that are spoken to her by her most hidden self. Mysterious faces and features, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic elements, unexpected human motions and references to art history she is unaware of appear on the canvas while the artist is looking for, experimenting or trying to understand something else. “Today my main theme is society”, Heidi says. “Not inter-human relationships, but that’s where I started. From day one, my inner soul and my heart decides what is going on the canvas. I never look at the outer world, only my experiences have influenced me. There is not one incident. The reference material is what then comes out on the canvas.”

Heidi Fosli likes to compare this transformation to the passage from an imbalance to a balance. Her starting points are, therefore, the imbalances of our lives, of our world, seen in this way not only as personal issues, but also as global ones, to be resolved through a common shift in perspective and awareness provoked by the deepest collective subconscious symbols, which arise spontaneously in her art. The result on the canvas should be a solution, a formula on how a well-functioning society should be like. The “imbalances” that she pinpoints in her work are those to do with injustice, of all sorts. Violations of rights and dignity, discrimination, isolation, lack of communication, inequality, especially between genders, races and religions, domination of the presumably more powerful over the weakest, selfishness and greed versus empathy and understanding, crushing of personal identities into meaningless conformation through fear, intimidation or the pressure of society instead of individual awareness and uniqueness to be shared with humanity. Appearance over essence.

Recent works such as Conformity, Identity, Independency and Discovery, all dating to 2016, are emblematic of her research. The disparity between genders is the one Heidi feels even closer to her own experience in the art world, where female artistic recognition, she discovered, was much more difficult to attain. Her impression was that male artists were naturally more confident than female artists were and could more easily uplift and think well of themselves. This extreme difference and “imbalance” between men and women, in the artist’s opinion, generates from a predominantly male-powered society, in which women are still violated and deprived. In her own country, Norway, female liberation still does not exist and disparities continue in the family, in the work environment and in the differences between educational and formative backgrounds. Idealistic movements, which try to help women, are trampled on in all aspects. The illusion, however, is that male and female are equally empowered in our societies and that their relationships are ideal, but this ambiguity emerges fiercely from the artist’s work, resulting in reversed and fused masculine and feminine identities where diversity has been annihilated and “loving” feelings are exposed in their untruthfulness.

Prima Ballerina (2016), Amor Fati (2016), The perfect Man or the perfect Woman? (2015), Comfort (2014), Imposed (2014), Empathy (2013), No Mercy (2003) as well as many other paintings deal with these gender dynamics leaving the viewer to come to his own conclusions. Ambiguity, illusion and transformation could be considered key words to understanding Heidi Fosli’s Opera Omnia: from a staircase that could be leading us up or down (Stairway to Heaven II, 2012), to hypocritical layers of masks worn in the society of appearance, which can only slip away through intuitive recognition of others’ and our own real identities (Boston Tea Party, 2014) or to the stunning transformation of a female identity once emotionally crippled by her own pitiful, unaware narcissism into a real, dignified and therefore beautiful human being (Avant Garde, 2014). Heidi Fosli discovered herself recalling many different artistic styles and techniques, sometimes aware of her references, many times intrigued to see similarities unknown to her pointed out by her art viewers. Among the earliest, clearly northern European Expressionism seems to have elements in common with some of her work. Egon Schiele, for example, with his rigid drawing, recalls No Mercy, 2003 while Edvard Munch shares a similar deep psychological and emotional introspection and expression, even though the differences between his painting The Scream, 1893 and Heidi Fosli’s Erbaut Bridge, 2012 lie in the totally ambiguous structure of the latter work seen in the instability of the bridge, the anonymity of the human figures (which could well be simply part of the material railing), or the flatness of space and perspective, leaving an indifferent feeling to a personal drama which is pushed to the back, to a less important position, while unempathetic observers watch on: the secondary figures in The Scream haven’t completely understood the anguish those in Erbaut Bridge see everything, but simply don’t feel or care. Dalì, Kandinsky and De Chirico, even though close in dreamlike themes and automatism, are far from Heidi as theirs remain codes, invented, applied, but not deriving from a real communicable experience.

Expectant Joy, 2013 is one of Heidi Fosli’s works where many citations appear, from Henry Fuseli and his ghostly romantic creatures embodying light and darkness in nightmarish, almost Caravaggesque scenes to Masaccio and his early Renaissance Expressionism. French Pointillism obviously comes to mind flowing into full Impressionism, with intense coloured strokes that can only recall as many other works by Heidi Fosli, the later, more abstract works by Claude Monet. Among the many influences, in fact, Impressionism and Expressionism are the styles to have the strongest impact on Heidi Fosli’s work, fused together in a seemingly unique one. Nevertheless, if Expressionism is the language of the soul, Impressionism, by definition, is the art of illusion and unreality, or a reconstructed reality by the artist. Heidi Fosli, on the contrary, creates a “New Impressionism”, where the transformative experience of art-creation allows the birth of a new reality, which has nothing to do with an impression, as it is the deepest reality, not just the artist’s truth, but the truth which emerges alone. The two “warm” figures who walk out of the painting Amore 2015, towards the viewer, are doing so independently, unaware of the artist’s desires, but escaping from everyone else towards their own.

Heidi Fosli - Il Genio dell´Arte, Luglio-Agosto, 2015

di Salvatore Russo Arte Critico

Heidi Fosli elabora, tramite la propria arte, un nuovo linguaggio, costruito su percezioni emotive. La pittrice opera nell'ambito dell´arte informale per dare respiro alla mente, e per raggiungere cosi un risultato fortemente espressiva. La luce che emana dall´opera diventa chiave di lettura fondamentali all'interno il suo lavoro. La pennelate ampie, definite da una gestualità avvolgente, si incontrano per dare il via un dialogo tra pigmenti che con delicatezza si incontrano e si mescolano sulla tela.

  • Articolo "Il Genio dell´Arte" Effetto Arte Luglio - Agosto 2015: See article here:

Heidi Fosli- The Genius of Art, July-August, 2015

Art Critic written by Salvatore Russo Art Critic

Heidi Fosli processes, through her art, a new language, on built emotional perceptions. The artist operates in the informal art to give breath to the mind, and to achieve such a result by being strongly expressive. The light emanating from the work becomes key to understanding fundamentals within her work. The broad strokes, defined by enveloping gestures, meet to kick off a dialogue between pigments that gently meet and mingle on the canvas.

  • Article "Il Genio dell´Arte" Effetto Arte July - August edition 2015: See article here:

Motivazione Critica e Premio Biennale Leone dei Dogi Venezia Luglio 2015

di Mariarosaria Belgiovine, Critico d´arte e direttrice Artexpo Gallery

All’Artista Heidi Fosli. La stesura accoglie una gestualità rivolta all´essenza delle energie, con linguaggio rivolto alle analisi di ogni suggestione. I suoi sentimenti evocativi elaborano la deduzione del suo progetto creativo, estratto dalle sue personalissime emozioni.

Reason and Critique Award Premio Biennale Leone dei Dogi Venice, Venice, Italy, July 2015

by Mariarosaria Belgiovine, Art critic and director Artexpo Gallery

Artist Heidi Fosli. The work welcomes gestures directed to the essence of energy, with a speech addressed to the analysis of each suggestion. Her feelings evocative draw the inference of her creative project, extracted from her very personal emotions.

Motivazione Critica e Premio 1er Grand Prix de la Cote d´Azur, Cannes, Frankrike, April 2015

di Jean Charles Spina, Critico d´arte, Nizza, Francia

All’Artista Heidi Fosli. Una serietà costruttiva del suo percorso creativo, continua ed emerge nelle sue opere, riconoscibili per la gestualità personale, e per l’uso dei cromatismi intensi e personale. Le sue opere esaltano l’istinto e l’inconscio, e rivalutano ogni atteggiamento di naturale e spontanea armonia compositiva, evocando la suggestione cromatica. Opera premiata: Global Challenge

Reason and Critique Award 1er Grand Prix de la Cote d´Azur, Cannes, France, April 2015

by Jean Charles Spina, Art critic, Nice, France

Artist Heidi Fosli. A constructive seriousness of her creative journey continues and emerges in her works, recognizable gestures staff, and for the use of the colors intense and personal. Her works highlight the instinctive and the unconscious, and revalue every attitude of natural and spontaneous compositional harmony, evoking the charm of color. Winning work: Global Challenge

Heidi Fosli- La figurazione dell'onirico, Ottobre, 2014

di Salvatore Russo Arte Critico

La figurazione dell'onirico. Così voglio definire le opere di Heidi Fosli. Opere che vengono partorite dalla mente dell'artista, per poi essere fissate su tela. Chi osserva tali opere, viene catapultato all'interno di un nuovo Eden celeste; un paradiso figurale, creato attraverso la magia della cromia, e l'eleganza della forma. Con grande raffinatezza stilistica, Fosli, delinea quelle, che sono le tracce immanenti dei luoghi, in cui ci viene riproposta la quotidianità. Le scene ritratte, sono situazioni reali, che l'artista, rivisita in chiave fortemente onirica e simbolista. La scena pittorica è invasa, così, da un romanticismo sublime.

La pittura di Fosli, porta l'osservatore ad esplorare i luoghi nascosti, della mente dell'artista. Di grande rilievo è l'uso che Heidi fa a livello cromatico. Un linguaggio cromatico estremamente vario, avvolge il detto su tela. Una cromia molto ricercata, che , attraverso colori caldi, ci fa capire la personalità dell'artista; una personalità molto forte e sensibile. Questa sensibilità è la grande forza di Fosli. Una sensibilità che libera il mondo dai suoi mali e lo porta a vivere nella luce.

 

Heidi Fosli- The figuration of dreams, October, 2014

Art Critic written by Salvatore Russo Art Critic

The figuration of dreams. So I want to define the works of Heidi Fosli. Works that are born of the artist's mind, only to be put down on canvas. Anyone who observes such works, is catapulted into a new heavenly Eden ; a figural heaven, created through the magic of chroma and elegance of form. With great stylistic refinement, Fosli, outlines those that are immanent in the traces of the places, where everyday life is revived. The scenes depicted are real situations, the artists reinterpretation is strongly dreamlike symbolistic.

The pictorial scene is flooded, so sublime a romance. The painting of Fosli, leads the viewer to explore the hidden places of the mind of the artist. Of great importance is that Heidi is at a chromatic level. A chromatic language that is extremely varied, told on canvas wraps. A much sought after color scheme, which, through warm colors, it makes us understand the personality of the artist; a very strong and sensitive personality. This sensitivity is the great strength of Fosli. A sensitivity that frees the world of its illnesses and brings it to live in the light.

 

Distant and Inner Being in the Paintings of Heidi Fosli, October 2014

Art Critic written by Manhattan based art writer John Austin

The expressive dynamism of Heidi Fosli´s figural abstractions, with their genuinely free spirit, are filled with a type of mystifying enigma that bears close scrutiny. They express the fundamental reason art lovers and creators in the visual arts are drawn to images. There is a metaphysical sense that pervades this moody work in which implied oppositions are put into play. The suggestion of eternal recurrence, so valorized by Nietzsche in his "Ecce Homo" seems particularly noteworthy in Fosli´s oil on canvas paintings. Here the affirmation of passing away and destroying, and the implication of the unconditional and infinitely repeated cyclical course of all things pervades this imagistic work.

Fosli´s best visual work says the inexpressible using forms and colors. Indeed art is the paramount language of the unsayable in which, as Theodor Adorno claims, it is seen as a dialectic between the intuition and rationality, as it attempts to approximate thing and expression so closely that difference disappears. In Heidi Fosli´s canvases the sense of confidence is mixed with an element of pure, urgent sagacity in spite of the aesthetic rowdiness with which the eye is initially confronted. Unlike the academicism of what might be considered "Traditional" post-modernism, which continually attempts to shock and reshock anew its audiences, Fosli is guided by a sensibility, which eschews destabilization, substituting in its stead an urge toward integration and assimilation. She is guided by the act of acknowledging and incorporating qualities that are derived from non-formal sources. Similarly her sensibilites are multi-layered as they are at once highly disciplined, intuitive and selfconscious as she applies her efforts to reject the premise of a supposed rupture with the past and an inevitable apocalyptic denouement to the postmodern condition.

Poised between being completely non-representational, yet retaining a residual figural impulse in which bodies and landscapes are slightly referenced by an obligingly oblique sugestiveness on the part of Fosli, her paintings, such as Ambivalence, Distant Being, thoughts, revitalize the world in one sense by referencing its materiality. On the other hand the artist makes the world more insecure through her churning abstractionism, and allows a timelessness and presentness to intrude on notions of recording the life-world. Instead , fleeting perceptions and sensations within the artist´s sensorium are tracked and recorded through gesture and color, and through her uninhibited blotches akin to the way poets secure their imagistic sensations through words of color while removing the tags of pictorial literalism in the process. The immediate, the concrete and the irreducible of modern life is what Heidi Fosli has chosen to bring to light in her work. Her coloristically saturated paintings are the surrogate psychic spaces that resonate with our own value and emotion-laded perceptions of a world both atomized and united in a frenzy of space, speed and time.

Within these surrogate spaces the artist takes on an pictorial ride that is unforgettable: sailing between the Scylla of psychic assimilation and the Charybdis of social incoherence we take the measure of our worlds, both inner and outer, through Fosli´s intoxicating pictorial language. Most compellingly, it refuses to hear itself speak through echoes, preferring instead to reveal directly mystical evocations of the beauty of the distant and inner being.

 

Motivazione Critica Premio Palma d´Oro Montecarlo, Monaco, September 2015

di Mariarosaria Belgiovine, Critico d´arte e direttrice Artexpo Gallery

All’Artista Heidi Fosli. Un linguaggio cromatico che mostra la suggestiva personalità creativa ed istintiva dell´artista. L´espressionismo si compone con eleganza e valida sintesi pittorica, fino alla vibrante descrizione dell´inconscio. Quadro premiata: "Fede"

Reason and Critique Award Gold Palm of Art, Montecarlo, Monaco, September 2015

by Mariarosaria Belgiovine, Art critic and director Artexpo Gallery

Artist Heidi Fosli. A chromatic language that shows the striking personality and instinctive creativity of the artist. The expression is composed with elegance and good pictorial synthesis, to the vibrant description of the unconscious. Winning work: "Faith"

Art critic written by Zina Bercovici, Curator, Tel-Aviv, Israel, 2012

Heidi Fosli is a sensitive artist. Her work is made of tiny brushes. Heidi does not stick to the reality. Her reality and vision is a base to emphasize her inner soul. She has the "blue paintings" in which she carefully and emotionally adds colors and shape on the gloomy blue back ground. When Heidi Fosli paints the human figure it is very interesting to see that she mainly describes the torso of the human being and less of their limbs. Perhaps she wants us to look at the soul and heart and not the material world. Heidi Fosli has a few artworks of staircases leading to nowhere. Where do they lead to? She leaves it to the spectator. That is what makes her work so special; have the viewer understand the painting in his/her way. Her paintings are interesting and she leaves a good impression on the viewer. Zina Bercovici Curator

By Costanzo Costantini (show Italian original)


Heidi Fosli, Rome, 2012

di Costanzo Costantini

Looking at the pictures of Heidi Fosli what is striking is the mastery of the space, the compositional structure, the singularity of certain colors, elements that make her woman-artist the deep existential anxieties and intellectual issues rather complex- an engagée painter, although this adjective is out of use, it is out of use of the name of the philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, who in the immediate postwar years, first with the famous Presentation of "Modern Times", then with the essay "What is literature?" Threw the theory of engagement, which was to arouse much controversy among the left, and not just of left, also because the engagement was confused with socialist realism, with whom it had very little to do. The intellectuals people who rejected this confusion preferred of the adjective committed the adjective on board, derived by Pascal and also used by Camus.

Nowadays it is not permissible to use the adjective committed but it is better to say "Involved in social issues." Truly this formula in art, in culturalized Europe, so to speak, it is little used, but it would be improper to use it for the painter Heidi Fosli, who comes from Norway and exhibit for the first time in the Italian capital. In her works 2002 - 2012 it recur in fact the words or phrases "Bridges-Roads-Infrastructures within our society- Dynamism-People who connect-Culture who connect-Globalisation ", a phrase unusual in Italy, although we have no shortage of artists who deal with social problems. In addition, she asks questions that do not properly belong to the artistic field, but rather to philosophy, sociology and politics. Just to mention a few: "It 's so we approach each other or We reject each other?"; We are getting closer to each other or are we losing touch? " "Freedom of speech. We are becoming Confortably numb? Moreover, in her vocabulary there are two words of crucial relevance, such as "Democracy Injustice." and the phrase "Reflections Unresolved Mysteries", which is pure philosophy, but also encompasses science, religion, theology, the knowledge as a whole ...But the main thing is that Heidi Fosli not answer these questions with the words, but with the pictures.., of the artist, with paintings which reveal great technical mastery, full knowledge of the tools, knowledge in the selection and combination of colors, possession of the symbolic space in which the miracle of artistic creation become.

Heidi Fosli could be called a conceptual artist, whether on the artistic was, in itself, by its nature a conceptual activity, as we read in the Leonardo Treaty of Painting: "What is in the universe in its essence, presence or imagination, the painter has it first in the mind and then in the hands. " She is born in 1961 in Sandefjord, Heidi Fosli studied theater and art in San Francisco, but her culture remains the core Norwegian or National (she graduated in psychology from the University of Oslo). She is a daughter of Ibsen and Munch, of Ibsen by Doll's House and of Hedda Gabler and of Munch by Little Girl sick. From the first she drew the concept of autonomy woman's personal, from the second, more than the passion for painting, the interest in social problems. Although destroyed by the death of his mother's sister Sophie, the author of "Scream" did not failed to pay attention to the problems of the workers and industry. It 'also known that in Norway, as well as in Sweden, the feminist movement has been more successful than others countries of the continent.

Heidi Fosli may be cited as example for Italian painters and sculptresses, who do not have never claimed their rights in the field of artistic power, Futurism counted few names of women, the group "Form I" only one name, (Carla Accardi), the School of Popolo Square only one name (Giosetta Fioroni), the New Roman School no more than four or five names Neither the history of art in general provides examples of the most comforting. In his Naturalis Historia Plinio quoted only six names of women, Vasari in his Lives of the most excellent architects, sculptors and painters ten ..

Heidi Fosli engages also the art of portrait art, art seemingly easy, actually very difficult. As is well-known, Leon Battista Alberti said that the painting was created by Narciso who was reflected at the source: "I am among friends used to say that the inventor of painting he was that Narcissus who, according to the opinion of the poets, was turned into a flower. So that being the flower painting of all arts, the whole story of Narcissus is then to accord to this matter. For what else is painting with that embrace art that the surface of the source? ".

In other words, the painting would be born as a self-portrait, or as a self-portrait and portrait as: a self-portrait is always a portrait, as a portrait is, in varying degrees, a self-portrait, because the portrait instilled in it herself, consciously or unconsciously, something of herself, as it seems to say already Michelangelo. It said Maurice Denis in 1980: "The subject of the painter is him ... all art is in rappresentar theirselves "Regarding the similarity between portraited and portrait, it can be illuminating the episode Picasso-Gertrudex Stein. "But not like me," she had said the writer, even though she was forced to pose for ninety times, "Over time the look like," he had replied the Spanish Master. Savinio argued that it is not the picture that should look like the portrait subject, but the subject at the portrait, as the portrait is a free interpretation of portraitist. Of particular interest in the art of the portrait interview took place in Palermo between Sofonisba Anguissola and Van Dyck.

- Sofonisba Anguissola: "So, you come from the lowlands of Flanders"
- Van Dyck: "Yes, my lady, and my name is Anton Van Dyck. Vicere Emanuele Filiberto ordered me a portrait and I came to serve him in this Palermo white light "
- Sofonisba Anguissola: "So you also measured to the complex art of the portrait, a difficult balance between truth and flattery"
- Van Dyck:" Not for you that you are a teacher for all of us and you have learned all the secrets to the court of Spain"
- rSofonisba Anguissola:" Oh, do not think that fourteen years are sufficient to penetrate a label designed to conceal the natural with the maximum degree of artifice.

 

Heidi Fosli- Imaginary bridges for a better future

By Floriana Tondinelli (show Italian original)

The rise in the Norwegian and international art scene of Heidi Fosli begins in 2006, when the artist decided to begin to exhibit her works. A choice for just gained after a deep artistic and fed knowledge. The field of learning and discovery for the artist are the many trips around the world, allowing them to see the people, the places, the atmosphere through the eyes of a painter and not just as a mere spectator.

These experiences form Heidi Fosli strongly, growing in her feelings of hope and sharing for social problems among the various cultures, integration, defense of human rights. The humanist aspect in the representation of individuals never abandons the work of the artist rather as your main theme. Works such as "Socialization" or "Democracy" to better understand the feelings of the artist. The symbols used by Heidi Fosli also belong to the art-historical memory, the one of the lesson of Eduard Munch, Norwegian artist and greatest exponent of existentialism, in particular we remember "'Scream" by Munch's emblematic work. Heidi Fosli is in its being a contemporary painter a feel that old, belonging to one of the greatest masters of art history. Heidi Fosli in her work does a transformation, bringing people, the individual a condition of isolation, but with the hope of integration and evolution in the principles of democracy for a better world where the individual is finally free. Other recurring symbol is that of the bridge, an imaginary bridge that crosses the countries, exceeds differences, uplifts the spirit and the soul towards a better world, works like "Stairway to Heaven", best interpret this feeling. The colors used are blue, gray, light blue almost all rendered in a monochrome, atmospheres, which so reminiscent of the colors of the Norwegian landscape, fjords, blue sea. Colors become a cloud of tissue that persists throughout the work.

This contemporary Norwegian spirit has made known this artist among the most interesting in the current scene, all over the world. From Tel Aviv to Rome, where it was held at the Galleria Tondinelli an important exhibition, which was attended by leading representatives of both Italian and international aristocracy and diplomacy.

The themes represented by Heidi Fosli in her paintings belong to us can be shared since they represent the current problems of many countries in the world and of many generations. And if art like this is, it¿s a time of reflection or raises issues common then the role of art is more 'than ever, and artists like Heidi Fosli who can give us these emotions are more' than ever encouraged and appreciated.

In Heidi Fosli the truth of the work of art is a concept which reflects and fits perfectly with the spirit of the artist, with deep and honest values that reflected in her works with present views.