About the Exhibition: Mountains - destabilized
Time is a difficult topic. Especially if we try to include three phases – before, now and after. Before is easy to define, and so is after. But «now», to Stig Bech – «now» is an illusion. It’s either before or after. Even the mountains are in constant change, stones are falling down, hopefully not hitting the inhabitants climbing to the few inches of land before land meets sea. Even the stone itself is slowly torn down by water, wind and erosion – where the forces of the future and the hardness of the past emerge in a running pulse of transformation. One day it will all be flat, tiny corns of sand and dust filling up the structures of the surface. But it will take some time.
Why do the mountains of Lofoten appears in Stig´s work over and over again, including the miniature signs of the people below? Well, he wants to illustrate the false idea of eternity, and show the beauty of the massive – while they are still present.
Being of pure mental health for five decades, Stig’s world consists of an inner turmoil of anxiety, depression, mania and delusions. Everything is abstract, balancing against the need for climbing to reality. Contrasts as everyday life. And so is the art. Stig tries to build on technical knowledge, the graphic tools, but surrenders to something partly abstract. Surrendering to intuition, finding in the artwork a space of refuge and communication – both with himself and the viewer.
His works are all handcrafted based on traditional methods and printed in small quantities on paper. Each piece is colored by hand on copper plates. Most pieces are almost monochrome in the colors of the Lofoten landscape, from black and grey, to ice green and deep arctic blue. Other pieces have chromatic interaction emerging from a minimalistic interplay of prior knowledge, especially the red houses showing their well-known profile in the dramatic landscapes. Introducing some warmth following his fascination for the people of the north.
Stig has developed a distinguished way of moving his pencils on the copper plates, adding a cold needle as a supplement – demonstrating a fine line of movements combined with broad and dramatic strokes.
Stig has over the years discussed whether his art should be nice or ugly, depressed or optimistic. Finally he has decided not to decide. A mountain could be beautiful or frightening, maybe at the same time. Andre Breton once said: «Beauty will be convulsive or it will not be.» And it is within this jolt, Stig creates his partly figurative and partly abstract graphic territory of the Lofoten landscape. Touching both figuration and overflowing expression, healing mental turmoil in forming reality in a set of strokes dipped in acid, and gently signed.
