“There is nothing that is abstract, because nothing is more abstract than reality”, Giorgio Morandi.
Ole Jakob Ihlebæk’s art could be defined as in between abstract and figurative art. Even though the objects he represents are identifiable they are not shown as we would expect them. Ole pursuits the practice of removing, of taking away the superfluous. The result is an ethereal space that allows reflection and meditation.
Ole Jakob Ihlebæk is an artist from the south of Norway. Born in 1948 he studied at The Norwegian State Academy and at the School of Arts and Crafts in Oslo. Since 1973 Ole has participated in numerous exhibitions, both in his home country and abroad, that affirmed him as a well-known international visual artist.
Midway between abstract and figurative, structures and intuition, the subjects of the paintings are always recognizable. They often represent landscapes where one can notice human intervention and still lives of daily objects that an invisible character has just left on a table. In both cases men are invisible participants of a scene that otherwise wouldn’t exist. What we see is not everything, what we see is what remains from something that has already happened, from someone who has already left.
These subjects are a way to express the pure concepts and to explore the meaning of formal rules, colours and light. Ole reproduces the same subject several times changing minimal details every time, such as light, perspective and shades. One of his most represented subjects are buildings. A black house is often in front of a white one, they have the typical shape of Norwegian houses yet every element useful for identifying them has disappeared so that they become the shape of a house but none in particular: they have no windows, no doors and no details.
Glimpses on empty kitchens and compositions of pitchers, glasses and dishes recall the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) who also painted the same few subjects during his life. Like Morandi, Ole Jakob Ihlebæk too simplifies the reality that surrounds him to create a new dimension that escapes time. The simplified perspective, together with the simplification of shapes deprives the subjects from their individuality. No narrative is present in his paintings that challenge the spectator from an optical point of view through contrasts, rigid lines and bi-dimensional images.
The optical facet of his work reveals a great sensitivity that emerges through the sharp use of shades of grey that are juxtaposed with black and white areas of colour. In Ole Jakob Ihlebæk’s works colours are crucial not only from a technical point of view but also because they convey a specific atmosphere, a private and intimate feeling that is also transmitted through geometry and order.
By carefully reducing every shape to its most simple form, Ole Jakob Ihlebæk trains his eyes to study the world in its most simple and most authentic manifestation. He owns the lines that he traces and looks for the essence of forms. Despite these images might look impersonal and distant at first, they hide a familiar and comforting feeling that allows introspection and wonder about what remains after someone has left, after something has passed.
Thanks to Ole Jakob Ihlebæk.
Source: http://ihlebaek.com/index.html