Gallery Onetwentyeight presents Real Fantasy Dreamt Reality by Hege Liseth and Kristin Romberg. From different perspectives the paintings focus on several layers of experiencing what is real and what is unreal. The exhibition opens on October 1st and runs through October 29th.

Kristin Rombergs paintings ooze energy and power, in an effortless style. Through layers of acrylic brushstroke, charcoal and pencil on canvas, we recognize todays mythical images of women as they are cultivated in glossy women’s magazines and through advertising – different female prototypes hiding or showing herself in an unknown identity. We cannot get eye contact, faces are covered, turned away or not present at all. They are all on the surface, missing or trapped in her own dream – or is it really her own?

Romberg is playing with clichés, and manage to create a strange fusion between photographs from women-magazines and cultural icons as Gypsies in a pin-up style. Hege Liseths paintings, drawings and animation appear in a coherent visual universe of simple elements as the circle, or fragments of natural forms. By incorporating nature’s structures she is paying homage to our physical universe – the building blocks of all solid and well-known that we can hold in our hands and that our bodies consist of. Mass, matter, atoms, cells, plants, planets or galaxies. The work invites reflection on some basic constituents of our existence, and perhaps awaken the dream of returning to primary values.

Through a myriad of forms in transparent paint, new landscapes arise and the viewer is drawn in towards the core of a different reality. Hege Liseth and Kristin Romberg have previously exhibited together in Riga and in Barcelona, they have also been in a studio community since 2001. Marina Goldena, owner and director of Gallery Carousel in Riga, has curated this exhibition in cooperation with Gallery Onetwentyeight. Goldena has produced several exhibitions in Riga for the artists since 2006. Gallery Onetwentyeight is an artist-run exhibition space, established in 1986 on the Lower East Side. It is run by Kazoko Miyamoto who also co-founded AIR Gallery, the world’s first non-profit artist-run gallery for female artists in 1972.

For more information see artists’ websites: Hege Liseth: www.hegeliseth.com Kristin Romberg: www.kristinromberg.com