LIFE´S ATMOSPHERES

by Arnhild Sunnanå

Translation from Norwegian by Kate Halvorsen

In Tove Sundt-Hansen´s exhibition Silent Catch we find in one of the gallery rooms several monumental paintings of exactly the same large-scale format. These abstract paintings are different both in terms of the distinct hues and varying gesticulating brushstrokes. The contrast between the cold, clear and the warm, almost glowing color schemes is highlighted by assembling the paintings in this one room which contributes to create both dynamic and tension. The cold colors keep us at a distance, but simultaneously we discover how the light-blue hues create an inviting depth in the paintings. The surfaces of warm hues, however, draw us in. Some geometrical forms leave traces in several of the paintings, either as clear or almost imperceptible quadratic patterns or pyramids pointing upward or downward. In the painting The Primeval Ocean the abstract changes into the figurative as two human bodies, a woman and a man, partially appear. The distance between the two bodies are linked by a crimson circle which surrounds their feet. Here the moment is caught when the two of them are about to burst out of a cerulean pyramid shape, a reverse alpha which points to a new beginning. Something new is created. Two lines radiate out from one and the same point, and reminds us that all life started in what we can call the atmosphere of the primeval ocean.

Sundt-Hansen’s eight monumental atmospheric paintings make me think about the fact that the origins of life is still an unsolved mystery. Which atmosphere gave rise to life growing and spreading on earth? How did life and vitality occur? Those who research these questions today admit that we are not even close to getting an answer even if they have progressed much further than just a few years ago. It is estimated that the earth is around 4.6 billion years, and around four billion years ago it had cooled off and water had surrounded it. Volcanoes blew sulfur out into the atmosphere and there was no ozone to protect against the UV-rays from the sun. Simultaneously, thunder and lightning storms ravaged the planet. Despite these conditions, the first micro-organisms started developing. The imprints which have been found around small volcanoes on the seafloor supposedly date back some 3.7 to 4.2 billion years. 

In 1953 Stanley Miller and Harold Urey conducted an experiment which would become world famous. They mixed the substances hydrogen, water, methane and ammoniac, which they assumed were substances that existed on earth 4 billion years ago. The mixture was heated and subjected to electric shocks equivalent to lightning, and the process was repeated over several weeks. At the beginning the mixture turned into a pink color, while after a week of repeated heating and “lightning” treatment it became red-brown. The sensational finding by Miller and Urey was that in the red-brown mixture they found amino acids, which are the building blocks of life. Through their experiment Urey and Miller could thus substantiate that organic substances could have been created in the primeval atmosphere. An atmosphere which still was reducing, that is to say, without oxygen. 

Even though organic compounds could be formed in this primeval ocean, the next step of how life was created, was still a big question. In 1977 hydrothermal chimneys were discovered on the seafloor. These were also called “smokers” because black or white smoke poured from them into the water. Strange animals and bacteria and rich ecosystems were formed around them. We know today that plants, animals and human beings are made up of the same molecules. Among these, increasingly complex organic molecules, various mutations took place leading to photosynthesis, something which was essential for the continued development of all life on earth. Through photosynthesis the organisms that could use solar energy were favored. Due to photosynthesis the atmosphere gradually became oxidizing, that is to say that it contained oxygen, which made respiration possible, - it became possible to breathe. In addition, the oxygen contributed to the formation of the ozone layer up in the atmosphere, and this gradually came to protect the earth against the life threatening cosmic radiation. Research has strengthened the theory that all contemporary forms of life have a common origin, however, the origin of life on earth is still an active area of research. It is still a huge puzzle with many pieces that need to fit together, and we are nowhere near getting there yet, according to chemist Carl Henrik Gørbitz, professor and director of Life Sciences at the University of Oslo. The gap is infinitely wide between simple organic reactions and life’s chemistry.

One interpretation of Sundt-Hansen’s atmospheric paintings could be regarded as an immersion into the recent research on the various stages of the origins of life. The visualization of something we can detect, but not understand. An incredibly long time has lapsed since the first microorganisms on earth were created until the conditions have become inhabitable also for us human beings. Crosscutting Life Science research has become topical now as we in relatively short time after the Industrial Revolution, are about to destroy the foundations of life. Among Sundt-Hansen’s paintings we find both the pink in Mother Ocean and the red-brown in Glance and Life, as well as something that resembles black and white smoke in several of the paintings. In Silent Catch we find the intense yellow which could resemble life’s dependence on sunlight for the photosynthesis, as well as the puzzle of silver shimmering “building blocks” which cover half of the sunlit surface of the painting.

In some of Sundt-Hansen’s paintings we can see horizons as the transition between the sky and the sea. In others, the line of the horizon separates what is above from what is below, perhaps as a pointer to the conscious and unconscious which lies deeper and less available to us. While, for example, in Life and Mother Ocean the line of the horizon is like a meeting or reflection, or a joining of the parts into one big whole. Although the line of the horizon has different functions the separation line is in the exact same place in each of these two-part large-scale paintings. This gives them, despite the differences, an additional attachment to each other. The diptych, a painting made up of two matching parts, has not been uncommon throughout the history of art. Perhaps even more common is the triptych, the painting made up of three parts and often to be found over the altar in sacred spaces. Sundt-Hansen has chosen to tilt her monumental diptychs over on the side, and thus the separation between the two parts is not vertical, but horizontal. The philosopher and art theorist Friedrich Theodor Vischer explored the expressive qualities of, among other things, lines. He claimed that the horizontal line creates tranquility and expansion in contrast to the vertical line which creates energy. The image as a whole has a vertical directional orientation which constitutes an ascending force. Thus Sundt-Hansen has included both of these seemingly conflicting qualities in her series of diptych paintings.

In his article “The Sublime and the Avant-Garde” from 1988 the French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard discussed the concept of the sublime with a special focus on the abstract painting. He explained the sublime as the term for the product of something non-producible, and as the “motor of the avant-garde”. Lyotard was commenting on the artist Barnett Newman’s essay entitled “The Sublime is Now” from 1948. The invisible is not in the beyond, in another world, another time, but in this: that it (something) happens. Now! that is the sublime. An artist´s visualization of something invisible can be solved like Newman did. His chromatic-abstract “Zips”-paintings consisted of large-scale color-surfaces only interrupted by narrow strings (“zips”) like openings or spaces in the color-surfaces of the paintings. Newman explained that these strings were lines which constantly were in the atmosphere and that he consequently had to shape a world around these. In Sundt-Hansen’s diptychs we can find a parallel to Newman’s “Zips” in the horizontal space which just barely divides the two parts of the paintings. In several of the paintings it is natural that this divide represents the horizon in a landscape. That which appears to the eye, but which continues into the infinitely vast landscape. Where sea and sky or where earth and heaven meet. This gap of only 8 millimeters is a visible space. Measured and mounted with precision so that the number of eternity becomes significant. The horizon where sea or land meets sky gives an impression of looking into infinity, into eternity. We are looking towards something we can see, but at the same time cannot see, that which lies beyond our reach. It is a line which separates our optical perception of the world. The known and the unknown. It is precisely the conflict between the known and the unknown which creates a driven curiosity, will and power.

Water, the sea also creates a unifying element in Sundt-Hansen’s series of paintings. The titles reveal and the motifs of the images evoke our memories of an underlying attraction to the transformative and reflective properties of water. Water gives life, sustains and takes life. Water is a large component of our bodies. Water can take on different forms, such as: oceans, rivers, waterfalls, amniotic fluid, cell water, drizzle, drops, damp, clouds, snow, snow-crystals and ice. The oceans divide the continents, however, at the same time they fill the spaces between the continents and bind us together here on our blue planet. Water reminds us of the connection between human beings and nature and all other life on the planet. Everything created from one and the same substance – the same origin. All water which eventually and before that takes on a new form, ends in the sea. Where the sea meets the sky, in the horizon we can look into a sliver of infinity. A transition and a continuation from which we still do not know what emerges. If we look into the 8 millimeter-big space in Sundt-Hansen’s paintings, we see the wall of the gallery room. We are present here and now, and we have the vitality and the power to do something. Maybe that recognition is approaching the sublime?