About Edvarda Braanaas
Edvarda’s paintings always originate in a directorial vision in the artist’s mind, where the composition and design of elements quite literally conspire to create the “big picture”. From the massive “Melting Pot” to her portraits of the women in Dostoyevsky’s novels, her paintings are unafraid to tackle grand universal themes like religion, sexuality, and human relations, and combine to present their own, unique metaphysical state.
Edvarda has a remarkably straightforward way of expressing sensuality, where she paints stories that seem to speak to us in their very own language. She is able to create images that disturb and challenge our assumptions about the superficial, in culture and art, much in the same way that her ancestors in Pop Art did. Her self-assuredness and style of multiplicity are made manifest, and makes it uneasy for the viewer to remain indifferent when reading her art.
Utilizing references from art history, literature, theatre and film, and presented in the idiom of contemporary aesthetics, like photography and fashion advertisements, the result could be described as contemporary renaissance. We recognize the fingerprints of classical masters like Da Vinci and Tizian, but her work just as easily relates to the ideas articulated by such influential contemporaries as Matthew Barney, Richard Prince or Jeff Koons.
The term ”urban symphonies” could be a close description of her work. The motifs and setting are frequently taken from airports, traffic machines, or on the metro. But as much as her paintings are grand and visionary, they also have a sense of quiet, and of fragility.
Edvarda often incorporates the use of texts in combination with her paintings, mostly to intensify a feminist message, or to communicate a more poetic voice or contrast. The source materials could be found among her own mobile texts, song lyrics, literature, or her own thoughts. She explores the world of advertising and fashion from a female perspective, using ads and supermodels as both inspiration and tools to express contemporary beauty.
Edvarda is very much a socially concerned and engaged artist, eager to participate in the ongoing discourse on art, culture and the world. She writes and lectures about contemporary art, and on her own work as an artist.
E-mail: edvarda.braanaas@edvarda.com
Studio address:
Cort Adelersgate 33
N-0254 Oslo
Norway
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