Jahn Otto Johansen

journalist, author, media personality

Excerpt from the opening speech to the unveiling of Calina Pandele Yttredal's lighting sculptures “Connections across Time and Space” 1 and 2 at Hotel Continental

There is something almost mysterious about trees. I have special memories from my childhood in Bøkeskogen, Larvik. Many other places in Norway, not least in Western Norway, I have seen groves of deciduous trees so lush that one would think you were south of the Skagerak - linden, oak, aspen and ash. Birch is a typical Norwegian tree, but Finnish people would say it is typically Finnish, and the Russians consider birch as their national tree. And we must not forget the tall pines and proud spruces, without which we would hardly be able to celebrate Christmas in this country. An old oak tree seems so majestic that it gives associations to a tree that is older than your family tree and that will stand there long after you have passed away. It gives an eternity perspective. To better understand the secrets hidden in the tree, I looked into the work of  the internationally renowned botanist Colin Tudge. He wrote that a tree is a living being that is constantly renewing itself, even though it is the same tree. A tree is not a thing, but a "performance".

A very significant artist, both in the Norwegian and European context, which we mark today, is Calina Pandele Yttredal. For almost a generation, she has, like no other visual artist I know, researched and worked on the theme of color, light and space. She has used the symbolism of the tree and changing shades of colour as the light has changed. Calina Pandele Yttredal is thus both a researcher, lecturer and visual artist. She knows her subject. In her work, she experiments with new products, which combine pigment colours and light. Our great poet, Andrè Bjerke, who introduced Goethe's colour theory to us Norwegians, would have nodded appreciatively to Calina as a colleague in the subject.
The light changes from place to place, and from one hour to the next. There is a different light here in the north than further south in Europe.
The morning has a completely different light than the sunset. Many poets have been interested in the magic of light and colours.
The great Swedish poet Harry Martinson is in "The Dream of Man" concerned with "the blue oceans of the sky".

Calina Pandele Yttredal works in this light and colour tradition, but she writes with her brush. Her works are painted on a canvas, on frosted or clear acrylic glass. The motifs are in motion without being video art. They change according to where you stand and look at them. The result of this insight and artistic creativity we can see at Scandic Seilet Hotel in Molde where Calina received a significant public art commission on the occasion of the national centennial of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson`s death in 2010. More than 40 works are included in this project which both hotel guests and visitors can enjoy. This is in my opinion reason good enough to take a trip to Molde. A number of iridescent trees form a path from the old to the new building inaugurated for the occasion, where they turn into a forest which can be seen through three floors. It is both at large-scale and intimate when  Yttredal  refers to cycles in nature and in human life, to macrocosm and microcosm.

Calina Pandele Yttredal received the Art and Business Award in 2009 for her public work with light at Paleet Karl Johan. The artist created here multiple experiences of the Nordic light and nature. The portals towards Oslo`s main street Karl Johan change light and colour impression during the day and during the week. They turn into different places, depending on whether the visitor passes here in the morning or late in the afternoon, or in different seasons of the year. Yttredal achieves visual magic by mixing a special painting technique she has developed, and advanced computer technology, with lighting scenarios which she has programmed.

Calina Pandele Yttredal's latest project consists of two lighting sculptures unveiled today at the entrance of the Continental Hotel, in the heart of Oslo city. The lighting sculptures appear as three-dimensional paintings due to an interplay between pigment colours and light. The work`s expression changes during the day and depending on  where you stand. The tree is the central theme also in the lighting sculptures here at Continental. With a little imagination, one can feel like the first humans Ask and Embla, who according to the Old Norse legend were created by the world tree Yggdrasil.

In Yttredal`s works we can get a strong feeling of "close contact of third degree". She takes us into a world that may have been unknown to us, she reveals aspects we did not know about. One does not remain untouched by Calina Pandele Yttredal's art.

A good artist friend Ludvig Eikaas, was researching "the self". He used calligraphic techniques and self-portraits to bring out this mythical "I". Calina Pandele Yttredal operates in a larger and less self-centered universe. She is even more subtle, one might say. Like icon art, Calina is not necessarily bound by the classical central perspective. There is an eternal contradiction in her works, she allures the viewer inside the work in a mysterious way, and one does not pass through without being affected by it in one or another way.

The works demand extra attention and reflection, as the colours and light change as you walk from outside to inside while you enter the reception, and oppsite.

But the shifts of colours and light in nature also suggest the shifts in human life. They remind us of the body's nerve - and cardiovascular system and the tree as a symbol for the environmental debate, as life-giving organism providing pure air to the earth, in the middle of the city's busy, hectic life.