Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away…
Bob Dylan
It began with long walks around south Manhattan. Late afternoons I would gather houses and facades. By a different kind in comparison to the ones I had worked with previously. Afar the safe context of the Swedish welfare state, but all the same time it expressed the same kind of closeness, the same kind of reflections and the same feeling of exclusion.
Parallel to this I worked with a sculpture or installation that I had carried around as an idea for a longer period of time. The reason I have now realised this idea is due to the topographic basis of the gallery space. Thirty six is a fifteen meters long retrospective sculpture, reaching through three rooms of the gallery. It’s made out of reconstructions, models and original pieces by and of works that have been important to me during my 36 years working as an artist.
The earliest work is a detail of a painting I made in 1976. Thereafter, in a somewhat chronological journey: a reconstruction of my first exhibition at Café Mejan 1983, the bomb, plastics, ducks, lights, K2, psycho, Finspång, Flying, Cambodia, Fuji and more.
Starting off I went through works and details I had kept over the years. Amongst other things I found the small sign with a radioactive symbol with a wing I made for the Spring show at Mejan in 1986. It made part of an interactive installation with lights and movements. The sign rotated slowly to the sound of an air raid warning. On the eve of April 28th as my installation was installed the newspaper’s headlines read: Radiation Alert – Forsmark evacuated, but it was really the Tjernobyl accident. Ever since this sign has been kept in a box. At the beginning of March last year, taking it up it felt like a self-evident and important part of my eighties. A few days later Japan was hit by the largest earth quake up until today. Afterwards followed a tsunami wave causing the most serious radioactive accident since the spring of 1986.
On the wall behind the sculpture Thirty six hangs a series of 25 paintings, each in various ways corresponding with the sculpture. Each painting measures the same height (36 cm) as the glass cabinets, which holds the sculpture’s nine parts. The first painting is an image of myself drawing in the sand on a beach around 1960, as the last object in the sculpture is the camera my father used to take the photograph of which this painting is based. One way or the other, everything is connected.
Surrounding all this, still New York at dusk.
…It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.
The holidays are over.
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away…
Bob Dylan
It began with long walks around south Manhattan. Late afternoons I would gather houses and facades. By a different kind in comparison to the ones I had worked with previously. Afar the safe context of the Swedish welfare state, but all the same time it expressed the same kind of closeness, the same kind of reflections and the same feeling of exclusion.
Parallel to this I worked with a sculpture or installation that I had carried around as an idea for a longer period of time. The reason I have now realised this idea is due to the topographic basis of the gallery space. Thirty six is a fifteen meters long retrospective sculpture, reaching through three rooms of the gallery. It’s made out of reconstructions, models and original pieces by and of works that have been important to me during my 36 years working as an artist.
The earliest work is a detail of a painting I made in 1976. Thereafter, in a somewhat chronological journey: a reconstruction of my first exhibition at Café Mejan 1983, the bomb, plastics, ducks, lights, K2, psycho, Finspång, Flying, Cambodia, Fuji and more.
Starting off I went through works and details I had kept over the years. Amongst other things I found the small sign with a radioactive symbol with a wing I made for the Spring show at Mejan in 1986. It made part of an interactive installation with lights and movements. The sign rotated slowly to the sound of an air raid warning. On the eve of April 28th as my installation was installed the newspaper’s headlines read: Radiation Alert – Forsmark evacuated, but it was really the Tjernobyl accident. Ever since this sign has been kept in a box. At the beginning of March last year, taking it up it felt like a self-evident and important part of my eighties. A few days later Japan was hit by the largest earth quake up until today. Afterwards followed a tsunami wave causing the most serious radioactive accident since the spring of 1986.
On the wall behind the sculpture Thirty six hangs a series of 25 paintings, each in various ways corresponding with the sculpture. Each painting measures the same height (36 cm) as the glass cabinets, which holds the sculpture’s nine parts. The first painting is an image of myself drawing in the sand on a beach around 1960, as the last object in the sculpture is the camera my father used to take the photograph of which this painting is based. One way or the other, everything is connected.
Surrounding all this, still New York at dusk.
…It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.
The holidays are over.