20 Feb 2018

Mette Tommerup: Ocean Loop

Emerson Dorsch

Reviewed by Elisa Turner

An intensely immersive experience enfolds viewers who encounter Mette Tommerup's "Ocean Loop." The impact of these 47 works is delicious but daunting. Cerulean and oceanic blues abound, paying homage to the artist's Danish roots and her life and work in Miami.

Canvases vary from large-scale to intimate. Some are grouped in lively juxtapositions. Many offer cleansing, meditative streams of seafaring and lightly abstracted imagery. Saturated with colors of sea and sky, the paintings are defiantly, urgently tactile.

Chief materials are raw canvas, saltwater, and ultramarine blue acrylic paint. A few works recall previous quirky, lesser paintings by the artist sparked by online searches. Created in post-Hurricane Irma Miami, near the water's edge scarred by storm surges, these new canvases are like soaked survivors, painted, crushed, and remade anew. The captivating surface of Big Horizon Seam (2018) evokes a long voyage home.