After the massacre July 22 2011 in Oslo and Utoya Print

ESSAY.by D.F. Colman, an art writer based in Manhattan:WHISPERS IN AN EMPTY AMPHITHEATERJette van der Lendes realistic oils have the preternatural capacity to stop time. Or at least slow time down. In his novel Slowness Milan Kundera writes: A word uttered in a small enclosed space has a different meaning from the same word resonating in an amphitheater. No longer is it a word for which he holds full responsibility and which is addressed exclusively to the partner, it is a word that other people demand to hear, people who are there, looking at them. True the amphitheater is empty, but even though it is empty, the audience, imagined and imaginary, potential and virtual, is there, is with them. With van der Lende the scale of the works may be small and yet we as viewers seem to be witnessing the birth of something special, an object caught in a cats cradle of relations (optical and mental) with other objects and the space that envelops them. This artist has the uncanny ability to create visionary work that intimates the sacred souls and sacred lives of the circumstances of objects in the world.read the whole essay of Coleman at www.jette.biz