TOR-ARNE MOEN
The Best of All Times
The act of painting—the brushstrokes, the tools and how the surface can appear as the paint is applied—is one of the most important elements of Tor-Arne Moen’s paintings. He says, “My way of painting is driven by an interest in the material and in the surface, the skin of the painting, so to speak. When looked at up close, my method may be perceived as expressive.” To add to his repertoire, Moen blends oil paint with egg tempera. The oil, he says, “provides a stable and solid shape that is perfect for detail work, while the tempera, in turn, is brilliant for treating surfaces with bold brushstrokes.”
August 24 through September 30, RJD Gallery in Bridgehampton, New York, will present its first solo exhibition for Moen. “We were immediately drawn to Tor-Arne’s unique usage of classic vintage oil-egg tempera, as did the masters like Andrew Wyeth, and many others, at a time that many have turned to photos in their drive for artistic speed and
multiple imagery,” says gallery owner Richard Demato. “We love his abundant dabs of paint and artistic expression, and his free sharing of experiences with his friends and family to create their own ‘best of times,’ a very refreshing and needed energy in the challenging world we now live.”
The exhibition, titled The Best of All Times, is based on black-and-white family photographs. The title itself “refers to the bittersweet nostalgia that lies in looking back and remembering times in our lives that never will come back—happy moments that we can only revive through memorizing them. Smells, tastes, feelings, colors, voices and gestures disappear from our memories little by little as time goes by, and we tend to idealize a past that is irrefutably gone,” Moen says.
He continues, “This subject also refers to the fact that there has been an unbelievable development in the world through the last generations. Everyone can remember that very much of the world as we know it now was different. Relatively young people remember the time before the internet and the mobile phone, and the grandparent generation may tell you about the time
when it was rare to see a plane in the sky, and when the sound of motorboats was not yet the dominant sound when you went sailing.”
On view will be works such as The Family—a painting of a family on summer vacation—which the artist says clearly shows the two ideas. Describing the work, Moen says, “It’s a sunny day, and the sky is blue by the seaside. The father was still the patriarch at that time, and he sits smoking in the deck chair in the foreground while the mother and children are sitting on the rocks behind him. Farther into the background, we see the summer cottage where they might have spent all summer holidays for as long as anyone can remember, before the internet and before the mobile phone stole their attention and before everyone got motors on their boats and broke the calm with noisy jet skis. They had to row or set sail to move on water.”