GALLERI NOBEL,kunst,grafikk,skulptur,utstilling,auksjon,Oslo

SELWYN SENATORI

Popkunst har fått mye oppmerksomhet den siste tiden. Den norske kunstneren Unni Askelands bilder har skapt debatt gjennom Nasjonalmuseet spontane oppkjøp. Mens en av genrenes første og mest sentrale utøvere, Andy Warhol, for tiden kan oppleves både på Astrup Fearnley og Galleri Trafo i Asker. Galleri Nobel har i lengre tid hatt den unge nederlandske kunstneren Selwyn Senatori

(f. 1973) i stallen. Og i disse dager fyller de energiske maleriene lokalene.
Her får vi servert popkunst i et nytt, spennende og ungt format. Han tar utgangspunkt i de amerikanske popkunstens hverdagstematikk og formspråk – men tilfører sitt eget særegne og energifylte preg.

Den 35-årige kunstneren tilbrakte sine første leveår i den italienske byen Pallanza, før familien flyttet til Nederland. Etter å ha studert illustrasjonsdesign gikk han til anskaffelse av et atelier i kunstbyen Amsterdam. Han har på mange måter ett ben i design – og ett i maleriet. Noe både hans arbeider som designer og kunstner bærer preg av. Senatori er mannen bak blant annet designet på de kjente Cenio-laptopene - i en feminin og en maskulin utgave. Men det er som billedkunstner han har gjort seg mest bemerket – og det er allerede skrevet to kunstbøker om den unge italiensknederlandske multikunstneren.

Hva er så Senatoris bidrag i det velkjente, men også svært sammensatte popkunstlandskapet? Kanskje først og fremst selvsikkerheten, selvfølgeligheten og energien som kommer til uttrykk i hans bilder. Det er en dynamikk og livsglede i strøkene og motivene som er genuin. Penselføringen er sikker, presis og bestemt. Det kommer klart frem at det er en eminent illustratør som fører penselen i disse verkene.

Motivene er urbane – vi er på kafé – vi er på gata, vi er oppunder genseren til en mer enn veldreid kvinnekropp. Ja, så veldreid at vi forsår at vi er i fiksjonens verden, eller fantasiens om man vil. Senatori har gjort seg bemerket med sine egenartete figurerer med klare referanser i tegneseriekulturen. Men man ser også klare paralleller til den såkalte gatekunsten – som etter hvert har blitt et etablert fenomen på den internasjonale kunstscenen.

Det er vanskelig å ikke si to ord om Amsterdam, når det er snakk om energisk kunst som Senatoris. For byen ved vannet, 1600-tallets europeiske handelssentrum, ser ut til å fostre kunst med en egenartet intensitet. Ikke minst huser byen også arven etter storheter som Harmenszoon van Rijn Rembrandt og Vincent van Gogh, som utvilsomt er en enorm inspirasjonskilde for byens kunstnere. Fargen var kanskje van Goghs sterkeste redskap, han er kjent for intensiteten i koloritten. Dette gjelder også i høyeste grad for Senatori. Hans palett er dominert av klare rød- og blåtoner i kombinasjon med hvitt, gult og sort. Fargene fremstår som freshe og glossy – og gir assosiasjoner til reklameplakater: En relasjon som er essensiell i popkunsten.

Men bildene refererer vel så ofte til hjemlandet Italia, med titler som ”Bar Milano” – og hans uttallige gastronomiske stilleben. Mat står som kjent sentralt i den italienske kulturen, og motivene kan ses på som en hyllest til landet hvor samværet rundt bordet er så viktig. Vi forstår at barndomsminnene sitter dypt: den velkjente smårutete duken og grønnsaker så friske at de kun kan ha blitt dyrket under en annen sol enn den nordeuropeiske. Men urbane Senatori begrenser ikke motivkretsen til sine to hjemland. I andre bilder er det legendariske franske kabaretstedet Moulin Rouge som tematiserer gjennom heftige benspark, eller han fanger New Yorks egenartete atmosfære gjennom et kafébord under tittelen ” Lunch in Manhattan”. Og igjen er det maten, og møtet rundt bordet som blir motivet når et sted, eller en stemning skal skildres. Slik gir den unge kunstneren oss tiliserte snapshots i et fargemettet popkunstuttrykk.

Selwyn Senatori har i løpet av sin unge karriere rukket enormt mye. Han er i aller høyeste grad en kunstner som både kan karakteriseres som etablert og fremadstormende. Han har deltatt ved en rekke utstillinger både i inn- og utland, og er også kjøpt opp ved kunstsamlingene til flere sentrale konserner.

Selwyn Senatori was born on 2 May 1973 in Pallanza, Italy, and moved to the Netherlands at an early age with his parents. He studied Illustration Design at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Utrecht, graduating in 1999. His atelier, where he works mainly with acrylics on large canvases, is in Amsterdam. Objects ranging from a coffeepot to a piano or a city bus also undergo the typical Selwyn metamorphosis. In 2004 Uitgeverij Uniepers published Selwyn’s first book, Selwyn Senatori.

Selwyn began his career with commissions for the publishing firm Lemniscaat, and went on to work for ABN-AMRO Bank, Rover, Rank Xerox, Mercedes Benz, Brandnew Design (packaging for Albert Heijn supermarkets), Rapp Collins (Rabobank savings accounts), NCRV, Koekje van eigen deeg, NUON, RoddelKletsKlub, Malmberg, Clockwork (Zwijsen Publishers), Vitalis, Philips, Douwe Egberts, Art-Box and for theatre groups (including Speeltheater Holland). He has also donated work to the charity Orange Babies.

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laying it on thick

Text by Louki Boin

When the hitman comes is written graffiti-style on the floor of Selwyn Senatori’s atelier. This floor reads like the artist’s doodle pad, with sketches in all phases and ideas for paintings all over it. ‘This text comes from a Golden Earring song’, the painter explains. ‘I just happened to hear it while I was driving to my workshop in my old little Alfa. In these situations I just grab a spray can and write it on the floor so I don’t forget it.’
The hitman can come any time with a hit of an idea, because Selwyn draws inspiration from everything that occurs in his everyday environment. Stay with yourself!, is his motto. He learned that early on during his ‘post-academic education’ with painter Christiaan Heydenrijk in Hoorn. Selwyn often feels so flooded with ideas that he can’t work fast enough to get them down on canvas with flashing brush strokes and quickly sprayed areas. He works frenetically, with unbridled temperament. In this driven feeling - not in an artistic sense - he feels a kinship with Keith Haring: ‘I feel that just like he did, you want to take everything you see and paint it. Going 300 kilometres an hour so that your thoughts have trouble keeping up sometimes. You just have to do it. It makes it hard to take the weekends off.’
This energetic spontaneity is expressed in the bright, lively colours of his paintings and it hits the viewer with optimism and a lust for life. Although Selwyn begins his canvases, usually in acrylics, with a dark underlayer of paint over a charcoal sketch, he works from dark to light, ending in light hues: ‘When I paint, I have such a positive attitude that I always come out in bright colours.’

A romanticised portrait of an era
Selwyn’s concept of the essential nutrient groups can be seen in his painting La Dolce Vita Italiana: coffee, food, vino, a fast car and breasts, ‘the five things an Italian man thinks about. No eggs, no dairy. Well all right, the breasts …’
Senatori was born in Pallanza in Italy, but as a child moved to the Netherlands with his Italian father and Dutch mother. He cultivates his Italian roots in his work. Food often plays a leading role, with the nostalgic, checked tablecloth figuring in many of his works as the Selwyn Senatori signature. Proof of this can be found in his recent series of large paintings, entitled Dinner with …
‘Lately I’ve often wondered who would I like to eat dinner with, and then I make a painting about it’, says the artist. Dinner with Tony Soprano: a gigantic plate of spaghetti with blood-red sauce. Dinner with Roger Moore and Tony Curtis from the TV series The Persuaders: ‘That Lago Maggiore-Martini feel of the sixties, that faded glory of a seaside resort, the Riva boats, I romanticise it completely. I make a sort of picture in my head of the places we used to visit in Italy’, Selwyn explains, ‘and of the films.’ The Mafia criminal movies with Frank Sinatra, James Bond and Robert de Niro that he saw in the cinemas his uncle owned in Leeuwarden. ‘The tight, black suits … I even bought one myself. And I sometimes drive my 1977 Alfa Romeo with brown leather driving gloves and Julia, my girlfriend, sitting next to me with those big Chanel sunglasses … Then I think of myself in that atmosphere. My paintings are often a combination of the things I want to show, as well as my feelings. It’s not just a black suit or a brown glove, everything together has a sixties feel.’

Crooks, food, tablecloths and coffee
Even his cats, the brothers Rocky and Elvis, are pictured as two little gangsters, in their black ‘suits’. Over the edge of the checked tablecloth, they are eyeing a fish, to see if they can swipe it off a plate. Selwin uses the fish as a metaphor for the Mafia.
Crooks, fish, table scenes, checked tablecloths, coffee and cakes (which he eats with his grandfather every Friday) are among the fixed symbols in Senatori’s work. They are a brand, like a sauce he can pour everywhere. He adapts them to objects that he metamorphoses into artworks: a bell, a pair of shoes, a Vespa Primavera. The piano from the KunstSalon in Hoorn, where he had his first exposition and will continue to exhibit, was transformed into Gangsterboogie. The bus he painted in Eindhoven for Frits Philips’ hundredth birthday is spectacular. The firm launched a limited edition of its successful Senseo coffeemaker decorated by Senatori. Douwe Egberts brought out four different coffee cups featuring typical Selwyn Senatori scenes.
‘But’, Selwyn thinks, ‘if you can do something well, you don’t always have to do it with a commercial goal.’ So he donates a painting to a good cause, such as Orange Babies. And he would love to find a way to help many people with his work.

Stretching boundaries, painting away
From 2006 on, Senatori will be stretching his boundaries: with an exhibition in Oslo, then one in the centre of Milan … He dares to translate his interest in expansion in his paintings. His work has evolved, the figures are larger and more expressive: ‘I’m enjoying laying it on thick. Sometimes I just squirt the paint out of the tube onto the canvas.’
A painting of buckets of ice cream has paint gobs so thick that viewers try to take a lick off them with their fingers. The reclining nude Figura is also a fine work. Selwyn portrays the women he admires as voluptuous à la Sofia Loren, over-accentuating the curves. ‘This almost paints itself: buttocks, hips, breasts … But tongue in cheek, it’s still neopop.’
He would actually like to do something three-dimensional with a plastic material, three meters high. ‘I’d like to make a space in a museum like Kienholz did, with all my figures in it. So that you can walk into my world, like Alice in Wonderland. It would be like therapy: you might walk in gloomy, but you’ll certainly walk out happy.’