101 kunstnere 2020/21 (101 artists 2020/2021)

book by tom jørgensen & frydenlund

“When describing an artist like Jan Tholin, whose art is completely abstract, one clearly can’t use the normal frames of reference from the surrounding, physical reality. Instead, one must try – to the best of one’s ability – to explain the dynamics and color composition of the paintings. Are they calming and harmonic or violent and expressive? Is there a sense of inspiration from the natural world or are they geometrically abstract through and through?

In the case of Jan Tholin, one can’t help but notice one thing: the strong and forceful compositions. Most often the paintings are built around a central axis in the form of powerful vertical and horizontal lines, which can be reminiscent of a torso with outstretched arms. Sometimes the shape is centered in the middle of the composition like a massive house. More frequently, however, the most striking characteristic is the broad horizontal strokes that connect the painting’s left and right side, locking it in a vice-like grip.

It is not soothing lyrical tones that flow from these paintings. They are more like sagas. Harsh, unsentimental tales about an iron-willed natural world in which we humans must learn to conform, or conveyers of strong, resonating emotions. This demonstrates an artistic temperament, which does not settle, but instead gives itself fully.

It isn’t that Jan Tholin paintings lack sensibility. Simply it’s a different type of sensibility, one filled with grit. A sensibility akin to a Nordic mountain. The colors play an important part in this context. We see dark-toned colors – Nordic winter colors. The twilight-gray sky, the brown of naked tree trunks, black puddles full of rotting leaves and snow in different nuances of white, dependent on frost and thaw. All this illuminated by glistening red and yellow berries, the pink of dusk, or the icy blue of a clear and cloudless winter sky.

Though Jan Tholin’s paintings are often powerful and rigid, he manages to create variation by introducing areas of pause. Quiet counters, that work as shelters in the midst of the ongoing power demonstration. By allowing color to be a driving factor he can achieve an element of lightness and unpredictability in his compositions. Like a stream that ripples through the mountains or like rain that softly blurs the perspective.

Jan Tholin is an artist with whom it has been a pleasure to make acquaintance.”

From the book “101 Artists 2020/21” Tom Jørgensen, Danish art historian, art critic, editor of the art magazine Kunstavisen, and art reviewer at Jyllands-Posten.