Jeremy Lewison (UK):
Judging the Ars Fennica prize has been both rewarding and taxing. Inheriting a shortlist of artists is potentially risky since the jurors could not have anticipated my interests. Furthermore, visiting the nine shortlisted artists has meant travelling to Reykjavik, Oslo Copenhagen, Helsingborg, Stockholm, Helsinki, Berlin, Turin and Pisa — an exhausting itinerary over a period of six weeks! I have found the experience fascinating and have come into contact with nine artists who have been welcoming and informative about their work. During the course of these visits I have also taken the time to try to inform myself, where possible, about the Scandinavian art scene in general, which has provided me with a context in which to judge the shortlisted artists. It seems clear to me that there is little that can be described as Scandinavian art as such; rather that artists in Scandinavia, as anywhere else, work in distinctively different ways which have little to do with nationality but sometimes quite a lot to do with locality. It is perhaps this which makes each one so distinct from the other and which makes it so difficult to choose a winner.
A decision has to be made, however, and I have decided to award the prize to Peter Frie. Working in the long established tradition of landscape painting, acknowledging his forebears Turner, Constable and Munch, Frie’s paintings are at once intimate and grand. His decision to insert the depicted landscape into a field of white paint disrupts the conventional reading of the genre as a window on the world and has a physiological effect upon the viewer. The bordering white canvases concentrate the image as well as allowing it to expand infinitely laterally. The landscape is transformed from a window into a gateway as the viewer is encouraged metaphorically to project his body into the painting. Viewing becomes a physical experience.
These are more than landscape paintings, however, for they express a strong sense of loss and mourning. Above all, they offer the viewer a distinctive and affective experience which encourages contemplation and inward reflection.
Jeremy Lewison (UK), Director of Collections of the Tate Gallery in London (1998)