Paintings: Vikta blad (ongoing)
Vikta blad (Folded Sheets) is an ongoing series of paintings based on photographs, taken in the years before the pandemic. As such, I see it as a reflection on a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ which 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 Kōbō Abe (1974), Rebecca Solnit (2005) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007), as well as Buddhist thought reflected in the Japanese art form of Ukiyo-e (1661). In this way, I try to reflect on reverse movements and the experience of isolation and lack of control.
Vikta blad are based on photographs taken during trips in Asia and Europe in the years 2016-2020. They show forms and structures in paper, textile, branches or feathers, and constitute travel memories. I was intrigued by approaching handmade objects, fragile materials, and museum artefacts that I have been exploring in some of my films. Questions of scale, framing and composition therefore became central, and relationships between painting and object, space, and movement. How could I work with small fragments and excerpts of the world, and give them significance? What does framing and selection do to everything that is left out?
Initially, I wanted to explore abstract and hermetic aspects of images, yet also discover how the paintings could form a spatial continuity or narrative. Almost like a stage set or ”mise en scène” where the relationships or hierarchies between paintings, wooden objects, film, and visitors, could be evened out. At the end of my process, after having ”meditated” on the various meanings of this work, I think I wanted to transfer a sense of irretrievability, above all in relation to time, ageing, and the (imperfections and inadequacies of) being human.
