Peter Mohall: Landskap
Luce Gallery, Turin
March 21 – April 25, 2025
Luce Gallery presents Landskap, an exhibition of paintings by Swedish born, Norway based, painter PETER MOHALL. This is his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.
As the Swedish lingual title implies, the exhibition thematic concern is with landscape painting. The coruscating landscapes of rural Scandinavian countryside captures the regional scenery, while the saturated imagery recalling the aesthetics of Post-impressionism, with embedded references to both regional painters like Helmer Osslund, Aleksi Gallen-Kallela and Willi Midelfart as well as idiomatic movements like Les Nabis, die Brücke, and Fauvism.
The specific material qualities of the traditional medium of choice, utilizing tempera grassa paint on jute canvas, along with a particular painting style, a sensitive brush handling and visual references, generates a distinct imagery that reveal a comprehension of the medium and it’s inherent art historical properties. Which is leading us to a tentative conclusion that the subject matter is subordinated by a conceptual inquiry into the medium.
The supporting evidence for this assumption comes in form of thick brush strokes sticked to the «window glass» of the illusionary window into the pictorial dimension. The brush strokes are «floating in the air» between us and the motif, causing our focus shift in and out between the pictorial dimension and the flat surface. The perceptual conflict destabilizes the narrative reading of the painting, leaving us with perceptual challenges searching for visual codes to decipher.
First thing we notice about the brush strokes are that they contain the colour index of the painting. Peter Mohall invites us into his artistic process by sharing the palette. A point of interest is the opportunity to study the change of optic values of a colour from isolation compared to inclusion within the context of surrounding colours in the motif.
An interesting insight about the process is that Peter Mohall has to calculate the numbers of colors to use in a painting in advance. Areas needs to be retained in order to properly attach the brush strokes directly onto the canvas. The brush strokes are often arranged as a grid, a note to the modernist method, or in alignment overlaying the motif.
Furthermore, the brush strokes are identical. Peter Mohall has developed a signature strategy utilizing cast brush strokes in an inquiry into a medium-specific investigation of the relationship between the painterly authentic and automation. First deployed in a formalistic setting on empty canvases, the cast brush strokes thematize the gesture alluding the fusion of two modernist strategies; the brush stroke as subject matter and repetition. Peter Mohall adapted the strategy using figuration as backdrops, innovating an imagery of complexity, multi-layered, with internal painterly discussions and perceptual challenges. A conflict between two image forms where traditional perception interacts with the implementation of modernist strategies.
PETER MOHALL (b. 1979, Löddeköpinge (SE), lives and works in Nesoddtangen (NO)) graduated from the Oslo National Academy of Fine Arts. He has exhibited throughout Europe, Asia and the United States, including solo shows with Luce Gallery, Turin, Nino Mier, Los Angeles, Koki Arts, Tokyo, Pablo’s Birthday, New York and QB Gallery Oslo. His work has been acquired by numerous collections such as Fondazione 107, Turin, Central Bank of Norway, Oslo; and JP Morgan Chase Collection among others, as well as public commissions in both Oslo and Drammen.
