Albina Rolsing is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on versatility and vibrance, exploring abstract, figurative, colourful or monochrome, expressive or minimalistic styles. Her work brews while spending time observing and reflecting on people and contents she is exposed through her readings and spending time in museums, libraries and studying art online. "I feed myself with stories, pictures and impressions. Sometimes focused, sometimes purposeless.
Until I’ve got something that hit me emotionally very strong or stimulates my thoughts. Then I create a title, a kind of headline for my next series of work. When I capture it I know instinctively what is the best medium for the project, and I continue to explore everything around the topic until I’m full with that and can’t wait to bring it out."
"When I start the creating of artworks themselves, I can’t stop. I forget everything around me"
Rolsing is strongly connected with literature, cinematic art and philosophy. Her work is driven by interest in art history as well as in contemporary art. She uses the content she absorbs as inspiration, almost as a kind of a sparing partner for her thoughts and emotions.
A sensitive inquiry about different identities within a person and about the tensions between human desire for intimacy and love and their urgent need for autonomy resulted in Persona, a series of figurative and some strongly abstracted portraits, expressive or minimalistic, on paper and canvas. "The idea to this painting series came a couple of years ago by reading In One Person by John Irving, books written by James Baldwin and watching the movies In The Mood For Love directed by Wong Kar-Wai and Only Lovers Left Alive directed by Jim Jarmusch."
The title of another painting series is Venus And Alpha, abstract expressionism, gouache on paper. The works are a metaphor for a sensual connection between two persons, radiant attracted by each other. Rolsing got the idea for the series by going through the publication about a series of photographic works by Viviane Sassen called Venus & Mercury in the magazine Aperture 235 I Spring - Summer 2019. "I was fascinated by Venus as motif. It promised something vibrant, sensual, something you can easily get lost in. I started to search for Venus: read Venus & Adonis by Shakespeare, went through the art history, studied works by Marlene Dumas and Edvard Munch. But I wanted my Venus abstract, just colors themselves. So I studied works by Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler and Paul Jenkins."
Nothing has moved Rolsing's heart and mind more intensely than Shakespeare’s thoughts about love. His poetry was a sensual and intellectual inspiration for creating the abstractions to Venus And Alpha and she used Shakespeare’s quotes as a kind of companions for some of her works themselves, instead of titles. "To express the interaction between two persons I used only two colors in my works, red and blue. I tried to tap the full potential of the colors themselves as well as the potential of their fusion and I was fascinated how they affected each other."
Some of the works of these two series were exhibited in a group show in October - November 2019 in Paris, curated by the Galerie 55Bellechasse Paris7, in the Night Collectors in November 2019 in London, and at the Frame Art Fair in February 2020 in the Art Center Basel.
As a multidisciplinary artist, Rolsing works in a variety of mediums to able to express things she is deeply curious to explore in accord with her feelings and her personal view of them. "I draw, when I want to express vulnerability, tenderness and fragility of human existence. Painting is vibrancy, emotion, vitality, a kind of timelessness and infinity. Sculpting is sensuality, strongly perceptible through senses. Art Photography is a fusion of known and new, known and strange."
"Art is expression. Different mediums are different languages and frames to express things in a very certain way that makes you feel something"
Her recent series of photographic works created in March - May 2020 is based partially on her reaction to the COVID-19 crisis that highlighted the fragility of growth and strengths which can be experienced through the works as they transform from realism to abstraction, from still to life. "Photography is for me a bridge between me and the outer world especially these days. It allows me to observe and to create directly connected with things around me in accord with my actual mood." During this period of social distancing three of Rolsing's exhibitions planned for spring 2020 were canceled and two are postponed. "The time of Covid-19 is a kind of break time in the era of endless growth. It came unexpected, brutal and called our lifestyles into question. We are stopped in doing things like always and need to take time to find out what actually matters."
"Art is timeless. The pandemic will not change it. But the impact of technologies and digital media will strongly affect the art world and our lives in general. People will spend more and more time in front of their screens and manage many things easily via digital media and in digital contact with others. To experience art via digital media is already nowadays possible and probably many art lovers start to collect works in a kind of digital libraries and private art show rooms, always present in their laptops and smartphones like music. For me artwork is a physical, sensual act. I love and need to feel the process and the traces of creating artworks on my skin, in my bones… in my hair, on my clothes and in the space I’m working in."