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Sol Kj�k�s Intertwined Figures
by Donald Kuspit
Sol Kj�k�s figures�male and female nudes--are exquisitely drawn, often down to the least detail of their muscular flesh and expressive faces, indicating that she is not only a master draftsperson but a student of the human condition. The figures�generally with a greenish or bluish cast�seem irradiated from within, giving them an uncanny glow. Sometimes they are imbued with the whiteness of the paper, emerging from it to breathe life into its flatness.
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Ljusskygga faaglar, 2009
Sometimes they seem quickly sketched, their contours seemingly improvised. More often the contours are emphatically given, suggesting a linear intensity verging on pure abstraction.
Sometimes the figures have flaming red hair, suggesting not only sexual passion but �lan vital�the force that creates the womb-like ball of red figures held in one hand by a rather grim looking gray man. Something similar appears in the womb-like space between the embracing figures�they seem woven together�in another drawing. Kj�k�s red�sometimes whole figures are delicately drawn in red, making them stand out from the white paper even as their transparency turns it into indwelling light�adds an iconoclastic emotional intensity to figures that, for all their tempestuous togetherness, have a certain classical quality. However often they may be in motion, circling in the empty sky like some strange planet, they have the noble self-containment�indeed, self-possession and purposive concentration--of the figures in Pollaiuolo�s Battle of Naked Men, c. 1465, as their well articulated, seemingly ageless physiques suggest.
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They are always in clear �classical� focus, suggesting their traditionalist character, however absurdly placed in empty space
�like the tower of entangled figures in Klimt�s Death and Life, 1909-11 (many of Kj�k�s figures also have their eyes ambiguously closed, suggesting a conflation of death and ecstasy, and have a similar primal, existential aura)--suggesting their modernist �age of anxiety� character.
Kj�k has a strong sense of the physical presence of the body, but once one get over the shock of physical recognition triggered by her figures�and their often shaven heads--one realizes that her works are reflective statements about the human condition. It is burdensome, as the two Atlas-like nudes�a male and female couple�holding up an enormous globe of figures suggests. Human beings need the tender loving�not simply sexual�relationship evident in the drawing of a seemingly lesbian couple, the one female holding, indeed, cradling the other, and keeping her from falling in the void below them. The mothering figure has a sure footing in the void, the embraced figure is full of fear, but the point of the picture is their intimacy and closeness.
Spaar paa den sumpiga stigen
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