"Patrick Huse: RIFT"
2000-01-14 until 2000-03-05
Frye Art Museum
Seattle, WA, USA United States of America

The word rift, in the sense of geological fissure or fracture, is an old Norwegian, as well as an English, word. Norwegian artist Patrick Huse (b. 1948) spent three years in Iceland, in an unpopulated area known as the rift zone, photographing and sketching the twisted and pockmarked forms of the landscape. From this intense study has come a series of large paintings that treat the landscape as a metaphor for untamed nature. Huse has chosen the torn, barren surface of the rift zone to express his perceptions of the integrity of this ravaged land. Huse brings both a classical and romantic sensibility to his vision of Iceland, a sensibility that shapes and nurtures his images, transforming the physical reality of dead and rifted areas into mysterious arenas where volcanic forces play out a cosmic struggle beyond human comprehension.

The exhibition is supported in part by a grant from the American-Scandinavian Foundation. An illustrated book, RIFT, with essays by Richard V. West, Folke Edwards, Hans Albert Peters, and Øystein Loge is being published in connection with the exhibition.

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