Malin Pettersson Öberg

Acrylic paint on MDF, 120 x 90 cm
Below: photographic sketches

Vikta blad (Folded Sheets) is an ongoing series of paintings based on photographs, taken in the years before the pandemic. As such, it constitutes a reflection on a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ that seem quite opposite to one another – a reflection that is articulated further in the video essay Unexpected and Unforeseen (2024). These two works have been developed in parallel. How can we respond to uncertainty, and is there anything useful in the unexpected and unforeseen? In the video essay Unexpected and Unforeseen I am drawing on writers such as Kôbô Abe (1974), Rebecca Solnit (2005) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007), as well as Buddhist thoughts reflected in the Japanese art form Ukiyo-e (1661). In this way, I try to reflect on reverse movements and the experience of isolation and lack of control.

Vikta blad show forms and structures in paper, textile, branches or feathers, photographed while traveling in Asia and Europe in the years before the pandemic. Initially, I wanted to explore emblematic and hermetic aspects of images: how they communicate through their visual choices, through how they are made, and not only through what they show. A bodily scale, a ‘zooming in’ or withdrawal of information, an interplay between darkness and light, play central roles. Behind the paintings was also a wish to return to a medium – painting – that I have not used for a long time, and in that way acknowledge all aspects of my artistic practise and expand on my methods anew.