A K Dolven (* 1953 in Oslo) also calls our habitual ways of looking into question. The artist, who in 2000 was the first woman to win the Fred-Thieler Prize for Painting for her work in the media of painting, film and video, blurs the boundaries between genres. She transforms painting into film, video into painting, sets images in motion and introduces time into perception. In December 2005 Dolven received the Prince Eugen Medal from the Swedish king for outstanding artistic achievements. In her cycle Madonna with Man, begun in 2005, Dolven transposes the established art historical motif of the Virgin Mother holding her child into the contemporary business world.
Dolven works with real people, she uses no actors; in the films Madonna with Man – Oslo and Madonna with Man – London the Madonna is played by a business woman, the child by a man. As in her earlier works, here again it is the significance of the cinematic/installational and contextual frame that endows the subject-matter with a timeless topicality.