In Ann Iren Buan’s work, materials are always concerning the spaces in which they are exhibited: in the gallery rooms, the refined colours of the doors are reflected in the works, whose monumental dimensions counterbalance the fragility of the materials used. The viewer’s experience in the space is thus amplified, and the works create a sort of emotional space where opposites such as sensuality and violence, lightness and ruin are perceived. Technique and chance, creation and disintegration, control and release, and the oscillation between polarities are the distinctive features of the artist’s work: there is always something in Buan’s works that threatens stability and suggests crumbling, collapse, and latent drama.
The exhibition, titled Stay, features four large drawings, almost scrolls of parchment, oversized and unrolled on the wall, and some sculptures. The works on paper have undergone an extreme physical process that is revealed through surfaces loaded with violence and placidity, while the sculptures reveal an elegant, sober, and sharp approach. The vertical lines of the sculptures cut through the space, seeming to float through the spaces, dissecting the rooms that host them, with a thin and fragile air but hiding power and great strength. There is deep humanity in the artist’s works, a substantial gesture and at the same time a sort of otherworldly tension indicating that everything is one, and everything includes its opposite.
