Artist of the Month, Norway Alienation from nature is a central theme in Kosmo’s art, like in The Spectacle.
Exploring the alienation from nature through art By giving shape to psychological opposites and working at the intersection of traditional landscape painting and a surrealist, melancholic and at times dark art style, Norwegian painter Tom S. Kosmo’s work vividly explores the relationship between culture and nature in a unique and thought-provoking way. By Linn Skjei Bjørnsen
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Photos: Bent René Synnevåg
Growing up in the small town of Fauske in northern Norway, under what he characterises as a “culture-limited background” where art was a foreign element, Kosmo was always drawn to the idea of creating things. “Coming from a working-class family and growing up without any significant cultural influence, I always felt like an outsider. Still, art has always been embedded in me. I had an interest for drawing, literature and de120
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Issue 101
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June 2017
sign very early on, and I have been making things for as long as I can remember. It comes naturally to me,” says Kosmo, adding: “Both my way of thinking and the motif elements I chose when I was 12 can to a large extent be seen in the work I create today at the age of 42.”
Nature – a cultural phenomenon Kosmo’s latest solo exhibition, Unnatural Selection, recently shown at Entrée art
gallery in Bergen, is heavily focused on the individual’s encounter with the natural world. By challenging traditional conventions in regards to how people identify with nature, the paintings highlight what Kosmo calls “our society’s alienation from nature”. “My art explores how people today relate to nature mainly through cultural construction, rather than practical use. Norwegians have a strong identity related to nature, but few can grow vegetables or hunt. Our generation largely experiences nature as a cultural phenomenon, though photographs, TV and the media. This results in a distanced relationship to nature, where it only serves as a medi-