"Crystal Clear Light" Invites Deep Contemplation at Dimensions Variable

Norway and Florida couldn't be less alike, really. The Scandinavian country is known for its stunning natural landscape adorned with pristine fjords, unspoiled forests, and majestic, snowcapped mountains. Its relatively small population enjoys a robust social welfare system, equitable wealth distribution, and a firm commitment to environmental conservation.

Florida, on the other hand, is, well, Florida.

And yet, "something that does connect Florida to Norway is the Gulf Stream," Norwegian art historian Arnhild Sunnanå tells New Times. "It invisibly binds our coasts, and its warm water currents serve as a lifeline all across the Atlantic Ocean."

Like the Gulf Stream, art invisibly binds our shared perceptual connection to the natural world, whether we're inhabitants of Norway or South Florida. That's more or less the concept behind "Crystal Clear Light," the two-artist exhibition Sunnanå curated at Dimensions Variable in Miami this summer. Featuring contemporary works by the Norwegian artists Margrethe Aanestad and Siv Bugge Vatne, "Crystal Clear Light" sets out "to materialize and visualize some of the many wonders of existence" through abstract sculpture, drawing, and painting.

"Both artists are investigating the incomprehensible emotions and experiences that might be evoked by relating closely to nature," Sunnanå explains. "I would give as an example the special connection to nature you develop if you live your life by the ocean," she elaborates in terms any South Floridian can understand.

"This connection is not so easy to explain, and you might not even be aware of it," she continues. "But if you leave the ocean for a while, you may feel that something is missing, and when returning to the coast, you suddenly realize what you have missed. How can this kind of connection or deep feeling become more obvious by looking at an abstract artwork?
"Maybe something happens while you study, for instance, the deep blue, tactile texture of a chalk drawing," she adds. "Suddenly, you become aware of the traces in the thick chalk layers and how the color changes if you move your perspective."

Here, Sunnanå describes the work Silent Transition IV by Aanestad, a standout from the exhibition through scale alone. Picking up where Mark Rothko left off on his iconic rectangular color-field paintings, the surface of Aanestad's monolithic, dark-blue, pastel-chalk drawing takes on a subtly chameleonic quality by absorbing and reflecting its surrounding light, which shifts perceptually as you move in relation to it.

Aanestad grew up on the southwestern coast of Norway, where she says she was "exposed to the never-ending horizon of the deep, dark, and rough North Sea, a flat coastal landscape with beaches, dramatic, always-changing weather, and intense sunsets." Besides the coldness, it doesn't sound that different from South Florida. But then, Aanestad is not dealing with literal, representational landscape painting.

"Aspects of time, tactility, and immateriality are the ambiguous core of my work," Aanestad explains. "Often subtly referencing landscapes and the celestial sphere, my art remains wholly nonrepresentational, transcending physical realms while inviting perceptual encounters."

Art has long served humanity as a means of unlocking the mysteries of creation by helping us access universal truths that transcend the limitations of language. For Bugge Vatne, an enduring interest in "materializing experiences and ideas that are invisible" led to her discovery of the enigmatic Voynich manuscript, a 15th-century handwritten codex of unknown authorship and origin that features fantastical illustrations of nature accompanied by indecipherable text in what is likely a made-up language.
"One thing that triggered my obsession with the Voynich manuscript was that the pictures were accompanied with thousands of words that could not be understood," Bugge Vatne explains. "The words were like a mysterious hum, like a song without words. That is one of the reasons why I called my series 'Humming.'"

Sculptures in this series, like Humming 96, will leave you at a loss for words as your brain scrambles to make intellectual sense of what ultimately amounts to the simplest configuration of the most basic shapes in a child's geometrical vocabulary. That's until you realize that the whole point of these artworks is in the nonverbal, meditative experience of their contemplation, not in trying to define them linguistically.

"This series is a reaction against intentions and concepts; it is about avoiding words," says Vatne. That goes for the "Crystal Clear Light" exhibition as a whole.

"In these disturbing times, my overall aim is to create an exhibition where people want to stay and contemplate and hopefully feel the urge to come back several times," Sunnanå says. "I believe this compilation of artworks by Margrethe Aanestad and Siv Bugge Vatne will appear as meditative rooms and spaces."

If you need a respite from the record-breaking heat in Miami this summer, you could do much worse than stepping into Dimensions Variable and cooling off to the North Sea winds of your mind's eye.

"Crystal Clear Light: Margrethe Aanestad and Siv Bugge Vatne." On view through September 30, at Dimensions Variable, 101 NW 79th St., Miami; 305-615-3532; dimensionsvariable.net. Admission is free. Thursday and Friday 1 to 5 p.m., and by appointment.