A K Dolven. amazon

By exploring the sphere between the familiar and the unfamiliar, her work invites new perspectives on the world that surrounds us.

Using a broad range of materials, formats and means of expression, Dolven’s work contains certain recurring themes: the natural environment,  the human body, and their relationship with time and culture.

Across the range of her work Dolven explores natural phenomena such as light and darkness, landscape and weather. Fog plays a central role in one work, while drifting icebergs are a focus in another.

Human presence, within both the natural environment and contemporary contexts, is examined in similar ways. In the five-metre-high painting "This is a tall political painting", the artist has covered the surface with a pattern of long, repetitive lines formed by her own fingerprints, inviting us to speculate on issues of identity and expression.

The body is also present in more concrete yet enigmatic forms in many works, including a series of works in which female torsos face a Norwegian seascape. In the film work "amazon" we see close-ups of an androgynous figure shooting arrows from a bow, a contemporary exploration of the ancient Greek myth of the female warrior.

Throughout history, artists have sought to convey universal emotions and states of being. The vulnerable confidence of the adolescent, for instance, is addressed in "puberty", Dolven’s tribute to Edvard Munch’s painting with the same title. With references to several historical role models, such as Helene Schjerfbeck and Peder Balke, A K Dolven’s work  bridges the past and the present.