Page 35 - endeavour-annfrossen

Paula von Seth

Creating Cool

Obsession and necessity are two starting points for Ann Frössén’s artistic work. This
became evident to me the very first time we met some 30 years ago when she exhibited
paintings in conjunction with Katarina Frostenson’s poems. This encounter inspired me to
understand the world using an artistic approach and thereby coming into contact with
the depths of my inner self. Ann Frössén operates in the field of tension between our
inner world and the changing structures of the world around us. These two worlds
become equally apparent. The movement of waves fold and unfold in a constant breathing
mantra. Reflective movements are choreographed across the canvas and light, as well
as water, radiates from her paintings. Sometimes light is cast across the surface of the
water while at other times the surface is broken up by an upset, rebellious sea that makes
it unclear as to the exact source of the light. Mystical images that gather up and retain
what fleetingly passes by. In the art of this master of the sea one can perceive sublime
phenomena like the coelacanth – the oldest surviving species of fish and the first animal
to venture onto dry land – whose skeletal structure is repeated in the human hands and
arms. Up until 1938 it was believed that the coelacanth had been extinct for 50 million
years but then one appeared from the depths of the ocean. This living fossil reminds us
that we humans have a common relationship with the sea. We originated from the sea
and we, too, are uneven fissures of development.

“Agony is our heritage and something personal each of us has to deal with”, Ann Frössén
maintains. Upon returning to Stockholm after her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in
Warsaw during the communist era, she reacted with anxiety when faced with the
consumer society which ensnares us in a self-inflicted ecological catastrophe. In answer
to this she built her own world of visual imagery with a unique marine language. In
Ann Frössén’s work the sea represents an escape, and a space made up of distances
rather than of measuring and properties, to resonate with the French philosophers
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

Endeavour, the title of the exhibition, was also the name of Captain Cook’s naval vessel
from which he and his crew “discovered” and conquered hitherto unknown parts of the
world for the benefit of the 18th century Europeans. The artist sails out across uncharted
seas but has no thought of conquest. Rather, Ann Frössén’s art is characterized by the
quality of “cool”. In the midst of the rough and rebellious sea there is an energy that is
retained in its depths. Here I also return to the term cool meaning peace both as a
personal and a social mental state. The word “cool” noted down in Benin in West Africa in
the 15th century, was once used to describe someone who “brought cool [peace] back
after a period of civic strife”. Someone who has the inner force to create reflection and
contemplation over a fire.

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