Parhelia – Alkaline Sun are paintings created with acrylic paint and lime paint on panels.
They have been cut into sections and then glued together so that the joints create dynamic and subtle lines, dividing the image into distinct segments. These artworks have an environmental theme on many levels.
The five paintings come from the exhibition Equilibrium, where the main theme revolves around the question: What would a parallel reality look like where we have chosen to live in harmony with nature’s striving for balance and equilibrium?
The first part of the title, Parhelia, refers to an optical phenomenon where multiple suns appear in the atmosphere. Parhelia occurs when airborne ice crystals refract sunlight and creates the illusion of many suns filling the sky at the same time. This is an ongoing state in the parallel world presented in my exhibition Equilibrium. The depicted suns in the submitted paintings are meant to function as luminous portals into this parallel world. Their light is intended to activate an organic life force at full strength that forms the underlying foundation for an ecological and metaphysical state of balance and material equivalence.
The second part of the title, Alkaline Sun, refers to the material level of the paintings. In the acrylic paint I have added a small and symbolic amount of acidified consumer products, such as shampoo, deodorant and mouthwash, together with a bit of aluminium sulphate. In the next layer I have used lime paint, which reacts with the consumer products in a controlled alkaline chemical process that neutralizes the traces, while the aluminium sulphate binds the phosphates. These processes directly correspond to the actual ecological restoration methods of liming acidified lakes in nature to raise the pH level and the aluminium sulphate is used to counteract eutrophication. The alkaline restoration process created in nature is a way of healing lakes from acidification, and the aluminium treatment binds phosphorus in the bottom sediment to prevent the lake from producing the greenhouse gas methane. Methane is a gas that warms the atmosphere far more per molecule than CO₂. The artworks, in their materiality, underlines the importance of these processes by making them a part of the actual painting. They bring together environmental problems and their potential solutions in a single symbolic material gesture, serving as a reminder of the need for ecological healing.
