EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS
"With a perfectionist´s feeling for the stones´s hide, Barbro Raen Thomassen has honed and polished her sculptures until they reflect the surrounding light and emerge with a three dimentional force."
(Nina Hobolth, Senior Researcher, mag art, in the catalogue for the exhibition RART, Kunsthal Nord, Aalborg 31.10 - 20.12.2014)
"A possible common denominator for these works is the doubleness of meanings, the tension between the unexpected and disquieting on one hand, and on the other hand the aesthetic expression evoking pleasure."
(Mag art Anders Ørom in Kunsthal Nord´s programme sheet for the exhibition RART, Aalborg 31.10 - 20.12.2014)
"Barbro's delicate plant drawings [...]carry further the tradition of botanical science and they make themselves felt by creating immediacy, holding on to the sense of a temporal dimension: the living, the dead, the sustained and the remembered."
(Nina Hobolth, Senior Researcher, mag art, on the exhibition Plantasi with Marianne Rønnow, Kirsten Kjærs Museum, Frøstrup 01.09.2012)
"Esthetically the expression is beautiful in itself, but it also points outwards towards something else that we cannot see - something that concerns existential questions and the uncertainties and possibilities of life itself."
(Else-Brit Kroneberg, Curator at Sørlandets Kunstmuseum on Thomassens seed objects, Museum of Archaeology, Stavanger 2012-13 in the journal fra haug ok heidni. No 3 2012)
"Barbro Raen Thomassen has achieved the most difficult of all: Working in the visible in order to give the invisible a space to appear in."
(The poet Paal-Helge Haugen on the installation From Ash in the book Av Aske, Entos, Kristiansand 2009)
"Eco-art at its most veracious."
(Wera Sæther, writer and photographer, on From Ash 2009)
There is noise, and we long for quiet. There is commotion in every channel, and we long for calm. The artist Barbro Raen Thomassen knows this; she feels it in her body. And what she creates we can stand before in stillness."
(Olav Egil Aune, Arts Editor, Vårt Land 24.11.2007, on the exhibition Alabaster, RAM galleri, Oslo)
“Seed as a concentrate: That out of something hardly visible can emerge something so great, so mighty. But also as expression of a mystery: As a static product between genesis and decay, the incarnation of latency between that which has been and that which is to come.”
“The exhibition is sparse in its form. Through the great calm of its presentation there open up vast rooms for thought. What more can an exhibition achive?”
(Dietlinde Schirmacher, Berlin-Köpenich, 4.03.05)
"It is a powerful piece, like the earth´s navel and we congratulate you”
(Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey on “Earth to earth” in a letter, 26.06.01)
“Her pictures could be many thousands of years old and yet they should retain their significance into the distant future. This is an example of the innate ability of art to defy time, to work in all directions at one and the same time.”
(Arne Thomassen in Bohusläningen, Sweden, 13.04.00)
“From a jet black, light-absorbing base appear signs like glowing copper and silver. Burnt stone tablets and narrow strips with a golden rain of signs down the black, as light on a raven’s wing, as fragments of love-words eaten by time. They speak to us. Not through letters and words, but through traces in time.”
“….like letters about sorrow and hope. Beauty is there to be made and found.”
(Helge Torvund in Stavanger Aftenblad, 18.04.99)
”Barbro Raen Thomassen´s works are radiating some refined light and thousand years of sorrow.”
(Péter Molnár, 4th International Biennial of Sculptor´s Drawing, Budapest, 1996)
“Quiet, introspective art is her trademark. A vibrating fingertip sensuality...”
(Arild Borgen in Fædrelandsvennen, 07.07.95)
“Our guest Barbro Raen Thomassen from Norway catches our eye immediately with her sculptures by the entrance, not through colours and blatant symbolism, but with a collection of torsos of welcome simplicity.”
(Mette Fastrup in Thisted Dagblad, DK, 10.04.95)
“Through the simplest of means, three human torsos spread across the broken stonefloor, the artist from Lillesand has succeeded in creating a strong and importunate picture of the war’s biggest cruelities.”
(Gunvald Opstad in Klassekampen, 11.07.95)