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’ – 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.

The paintings show forms and structures in paper, textile, branches or feathers, translated from photographs taken on trips in the years before the pandemic. While painting, I am often concerned by questions of scale, translation and framing (see for example Grosz, 2008). In this particular series, my aim was to explore an interplay of hermetic and narrative aspects of painting, of what might be evoked through the inclusion and exclusion of various elements in the frame. For instance, what happens if I zoom in on very small details of an image, and thereby largely exclude everything else? What can painting actually tell or evoke, and why do we do it? I was also intrigued by exploring how various formal choices [scale, framing, color, light and placing…] will lead to how we perceive the paintings in the space. Aspects of the body, of movement, narrativity and continuity intrigued me.