Humlan Lange b. 1957

Our inability to achieve true knowledge of the external world through the senses is a recurring theme in the work of Humlan Lange. Her paintings depict human figures, mainly young girls, against abstract backgrounds. Looming over the girls is a feeling of alienation. They seem distant from each other and the mono-chrome spaces they inhabit. Devoid of anything but color, these spaces highlight the girl´s separation from each other by removing every natural reference. Without being able to determine the nature of an external object, what can a mind truly know about another, Lange seems to ask? It is easy to imagine how the girls depicted by the painter, may be going through different stages of acceptance of reality as such; that no immediate knowledge of the external is possible; that no direct inter-human exchanges will ever really take place. As a result, we can see how some girls bear a look of anger, others one of resignation. Others yet look as if they have perhaps found a kind of escape in completely abandoning external reality in favor of introspection. Perhaps within, is there the possibility for truth?

 

/ Erik Jönsson