Martin West uses various artistic techniques, such as watercolors, photographs, small sculptures and oil paintings to illuminate a scene from different angles. The room is always the starting point and in this exhibition the Tengbomhallen of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts is a sounding board for the play that takes place.

What exists here, or stands, or perhaps above all hangs, are attempts to stage, or give physical form to, some specific spatial experiences. These sudden experiences, occurring in the middle of a typical Tuesday, are so fleeting that they are difficult to derive, and so complex that it is difficult to separate what is what. And as soon as they occur, they are gone.

At first I think it's something miraculous and beautiful that I've glimpsed a shadow of, but there's also an underlying discomfort like when you're swimming in a lake and the temperature changes, something bodily, completely beyond what you can put into words.

Sometimes I think that other artists have captured this unstable but concrete thing in their art, and if they have succeeded, there is still no method to retrieve it, which is quite obvious. They have found something that is valid for them.

The experiments that take place in Tengbomhallen are attempts to give the experiences body, not to flesh out what they consist of, because that is not possible, but as a parallel equivalent. Or, not equivalent, but rather parallel presence. Perhaps they can be read as experiments individually, or as a combined experiment in different materials and techniques. Or as some kind of experiment in this specific room, with its complex characteristics. Which only makes everything even more complex.

© Martin West/BUS 2026