Ida Thorhauge: A Storm Within

In A Storm Within, the artist’s second solo exhibition at Wilson Saplana
Gallery, Ida Thorhauge presents a series of new large-scale oil paintings
that explore womanhood and the presentation of women as they have been
depicted through centuries in art history as well as in recent popular culture.

Eight colorful, more than human-height paintings of strong female figures
surround us from the walls of the gallery. Even though the paintings
unmistakably come from Thorhauge’s hand with quivering, powerful colours
and clear brushstrokes, there seems to be something new at stake. Whereas
collectivity and care between figures, animals and nature previously has been
at the center of Thorhauge’s works, the women now stand alone and stoic
in their own defined space within the picture frame. Resting in a presence
that demands our attention. The figures’ bodies are wide, firmly planted on
the ground, and the hands are large and expressive with distinct gestures.

Depictions of women have always interested Ida Thorhauge, and throughout
her career she has explored the female figure in many different constellations.
In her recent museum exhibition, Goddesses at the Museum of Religious
Art in Lemvig, Thorhauge explored the mother-child motif, and the show
included works which revolved around art history’s preoccupation with the
complex relationship between woman and the mythical creature the unicorn.
In other paintings, the community between women, across generations, or
the community of fate between nature and man, has been explored.

In her new body of work, presented in A Storm Within Ida Thorhauge is
not concerned with questions of identity or exploring an inner psychology.
Rather, in her works, she examines personas or stereotypes that are
projected and depicted in our shared cultural framework of understanding.
We see representations of strong women who all stand or almost float in the
pictorial space, without environment or much context. The feet are hidden,
and the bodies are only hinted at through the expressive strokes of the
deep, coloured dresses. It is the gaze, the hands, the choice of colors and
a few added figurative elements that tell the story of the women which we
might seem to recognize from pictures of Madonnas, Ophelia stories, moods
from the Brontë sisters, the Bloomsbury circle, Edvard Munch, Japanese
manga tradition, and much more. Still, Ida Thorhauge’s women are unique,
recognizable, and distinctive, which we can explore in their intense presence.