Irene Christensen

Biography

Irene Christensen divides her time working in her studios in New York City and Oslo, Norway; and for one month each year in Costa Rica.

She has exhibited in both Europe and the United States since 1983. In 2017 Irene Christensen participated in the Personal Structures exhibition organized by the Global Art Affairs Foundation and hosted by the European Cultural Center in the context of the Venice Art Biennale of 2017. Her art has been shown in many museums such as Galeria Nacional, Costa Rica; Norsk Skogbruks Museum, Norway; Norwegische Tage, Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany; EFTA, Brussels, Belgium; Bergen Museum, NJ, USA; Paterson Museum, NJ, USA; Noyes Museum, NJ, USA; Newark Museum, NJ, USA as well as many art centers and galleries including in Brazil, Israel, and Argentina.

She studied at the Art Student League in New York City with Richard Pousette-Dart and Joseph Hirsch, at the Voss School of Fine arts, and at the Institute for Rom Kunst in Oslo, Norway.

She is a member of the Norwegian Association of Professional Visual Artists; Newark Art Council; Sculptors Guild, New York; advisory board member to Everglades Artists in Residence (AIRIE), Florida and Salmagundi Club, NYC

The paintings, accordion books, drawings, and small sculptures are represented in many museums and personal collections in Europe and the USA.

Artist statement

I work intuitively, engaging my emotions and memory - employing the fullest range of life possible. I approach my work as streams of consciousness to actualize in symbols an alternative world allowing dreams and reality to meet. Traveling from ancient times to the present, the unexplainable is transformed, and the beginning and the end meet.

For example, my Concertina Book series documents symbolic tellings of my cognitive and psychological perception in accordion book format. In these shaped and narrow drawings, I found a framework that fits my expressive nature.

Profound concepts of time, space, and existence have animated humankind's artistic musings since the early days of human history, as evidenced by the icons created by ancient artists of petroglyphs and cave paintings.

My work does not reproduce directly from nature. Rather, it is nature plus the ancient and modern symbols created by man reformulated and transformed through my imagination. The personal structures in the workflow intuitively into each other.

My work reveals a surreal, interior world of creatures where nature's symmetry is rare. A world where animals have an elaborate complex of horns, speckled skin, arms, legs, and wild eyes. Volcanoes have faced voracious maws. A screaming bird resembles a stealth bomber. Flamingos transform into a cloud of floating boomerangs. Icons of ancient civilizations reappear and work their magic on the present.

I believe that the animal, human, and environmental forms are subconscious entities that don't only live in me but are fundamental components of human existence.