Abstraction in Art

Jolanta Johnsson's work is a very humanistic narrative. The author is really interested in two issues only: human and nature. The dynamics of her artistic path are due to the fact that at certain times one theme dominates over the other, is more and more explored and more impassions the painter. But never has the exclusivity. When series of landscapes are created — as it is happening now — Johnsson from time to time still returns to portraiture. Often, moreover, are the returns to older works, with the attempt of deepening them psychologically or changing them completely, with newly selected techniques or meanings. This is why the construction of this exhibition is dualistic.

The leading theme is the latest series of landscapes. They form a kind of balancing act between abstract and realism. In my opinion they express what it is in any work most valuable — the synthesis. Two series of works relate to the element of water. Each of them shows the subject from a different point of view. The attempt of watching the water's surface from above brings the interesting results. On one side is depicted the vibrating existence of color patches, on the other are the reflections of the sky and clouds. These impressions were captured on significantly sized canvases.

The recent Johnsson's landscape paintings stand out against her previous achievements with the choice of colors and the method of applying them. This change is another determinant of the dynamics of the author's paintings. In certain periods of her artistic career the colors of her work are sonorous, with clean, lush palette, balanced with strong contrasts, which cause the impression of fluorescence. In other periods she is interested with monochrome creations only, almost with no nuanced contrast, where search for pure color fails.

At the opposite extreme is the work of a few monochromatic portraits. I am pointing out the series “Clouds Over the Fields”. Not very large number of works in muted colors completes the capabilities of Johnsson's palette. Rounded, very sensual shapes show nature in its successive layers. They indicate that we are a part of it, that we cannot be abstracted from it.

This approach to the landscape is visible when one collides with different series of paintings. Looking at Johnsson's present human portraits and figures one does not need statements to capture the analytical attitude of the artist. Here you can see exactly scientific meticulousness of the considerations and in-depth psychological approach.

She is interested not only in painting, but also in drawing and printmaking. Each of these techniques requires a different approach. The ink drawing do not allow the torturous, arduous amendments. The printmaking operates through experiment and subsequent matrices, reproduced on the same sheet. When one combines together all the stories of man, it emerges from them their deep humanistic metaphor of human life. Not very optimistic, but definitely real.

What is most interesting in Jolanta Johnsson's painting, takes place mainly in the construction of the mold. The artist by using the postmodernism's theories, draws from the ideas of deconstruction a thorough analysis of the works of art, challenging the problems of the illusion, created by light and color of the space's structure.

Jolanta Johnsson in a creative way refers to neo impressionism, colorism and expressionism. In her paintings, centered around the theme “a man in space”, she shows the human as creature condemned to profound loneliness, even in relationships with other people. Her painting combines with the philosophy of existentialism, in which a person is recognized as free, condemned of the necessity of choice and responsibility creature.

The artist, by keeping on the edge of drama, captures the spirit of the inability to communicate with the “other foreigner” and finding the unity with the world. She paints with tiny points of color, applying layer upon layer. With this technique, color and light model the body, forming the reference and the unity with space.

The use of strong contrasts increases the expression of the paintings and makes a deep impact of space analyzed by color and divisions. The harmony of the elements of the composition, internal divisions, the static poses, give a clarity to the message and add to it a balance in terms of the content and the form.

The landscapes painted by Jolanta Johnsson, complement the artistic realm of exploration. They are characterized by a similar creative technique, by the simplifications and strong divisions, by the synthetism, suggesting a role of significant forms.

The whole of Jolanta Johnsson work combines a difficult to obtain intellectual simplicity, the logical rigor of structured composition, the geometrization of the forms and divisions of the plane, proportionality, the elements' harmony and consonance of the colors. The vibrant colors and light, the inherent dynamism achieved through the technique, form her own unique artistic style.

The prepared by the artist PhD work is presented by a series of a dozen or so oil on canvas paintings, which in form and meaning are united. The series is called — “Man in space” — the artistic portrait of human's figure in different planes, which describes the loneliness and the processes of searching the dialog with the others. These paintings are the half abstract spectacle of the human's figure — men and women in different static poses, frozen in stillness. Sometimes they are two of them in the homogenous canvas' space, sometimes there are more, one on top of the other. Their proportions and size give the meaning of being in the same location, and in this way the space of the paintings is unreal, and the lonely figures, isolated from each other and from the surrounding by thick outline, are like small toy ships drifting in different directions on the one plan space.

Jolanta Johnsson's landscapes create a gentle aura of mystery, the result of an intense and sensuous experience of nature. The individual compositions are distinguished by a high level of painterly sophistication, evidenced in a discipline of composition and sparing use of colour. The artist contemplates the landscape and discovers either for herself and for us, her audience — a treasure trove of colours, light, romantic elation, or a note of melancholy.

I have had the opportunity of witnessing Jolanta Johnsson's artistic achievements, and I can affirm that she offers the viewer a shared experience all the while retaining the right to freely interpret her subject: the natural form. Her paintings deserve to be viewed with due attention as they exist as an attestation to the professional responsibility of the artist. The suggestiveness of Jolanta Johnsson's paintings has the effect of plunging the viewer into the lyrical world of distant horizons; it evokes the pleasure of distant voyages into the imaginary.

Jolanta Johnsson's latest artistic work — the paintings as well as the drawings, balance on the border of abstract and realism. We can read them as the metaphors or allusions of landscape. The exhibition's title — Art Depot — is very adequate, because the artist's work are like the moments grabbed from memory, like vacation recollections of the sketches of shapes not seen long time ago.

Jolanta Johnsson tries to reach the audience through sensitive way of feeling the nature. Her art is rich in facture, which creates strong composition and construction. Her artwork is surrounded by aura of mystery, build by colors which are not demonic, they are rather delicate riddle based on simple, well balanced array of tinges. The melancholic journeys of light, the landscape's hot saturation at dusk, the windless thickness of the mountain's air and music-like drawings, sketched by the waves on the beach's sand — they are the subjects of these compositions, not the precise pieces of nature.

When we look at them we know that they are complete, nothing is lacking, they don't contain unnecessary elements, they are not overdone, too decorative, too loaded; on the contrary they build well thought and closed composition.