Contemporary Art & Design presents Torsten Andersson

Torsten Andersson Måsen

“ Only a fanatical style-devotee could overlook the way that the dominant styles of painting in the 1950s had begun to increasingly grow closer before finally, immediately prior to monochrome painting, coinciding. The step towards monochrome painting was inevitable. Behind this timeliness, I traced a Darwinian theory of evolution, an evolution that in my case, in 1961, concluded with the white “Måsen”.

“Måsen” was originally a piece of linen fabric, from which I cut a bird-like shape, then I sewed the shape on-again, glued the canvas and finally painted everything in white. On the front of the canvas, the seam is now visible as a line that takes shape then disappears, then takes shape again. In the moments when the line retreats a surface is created by the white colour. It was these two interpretations of “Måsen” that I uncovered in 1962 and presented separately in “Källan”. The upper painted part of “Källan” signifies a conscious reconquering of the approach that transforms the surface into a fictitious closed vacuum, an approach that is identical to the visual language of realism. The lower, separate black wooden panel is an elaboration on modern painting’s view of surface as surface and as open, spatial surface structure.