In three exhibition rooms I move through different visual worlds that have all accompanied me since I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1986. Sometimes I have left them for other projects, with different visual languages ​​and materials, but always returned to them after a longer or shorter period of time. Now, for the first time, I am showing these visual worlds in a larger whole.

My residence in the provinces, with a studio and residence housed in an old mission house, has enabled me to work in large formats. A generous amount of freedom has been a significant component of my creative work for more than two decades.

GREENHOUSE is a series of paintings that all revolve around the tower. The origin of the suite stems from an etching, Cathedral, from 1984. In the architectural spatiality of the tower, nature has found its own ecosystem. The rooms also provide a playground for a searching and, in every sense, pleasurable painting. The power of growth
(imagination) seeks the most unexpected forms and relationships.

In the case of PAN, I find myself back to the 60s and Ray Bradbury's short story collection The Illustrated Man, which was also filmed with Rod Steiger in the lead role. In the different stories, a transformation occurs when the viewer of the man's illuminated backboard is drawn into a hallucinatory vision of the future. In four paintings, with exposed backboards, I have worked with a kind of mental projections, which also forms the basis of an imaginary transformation. Any similarity to the contemporary craze for tattoos is purely coincidental.

The main part of the CASE STUDIES section emanates from a film clip by the Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, namely Lenin, dismantled and transported on a barge up the Danube River in the wake of the Balkan War in the 90s. Based on this most moving scene in film history, I have made a series of variations that all revolve around the river, the barge and the crossing.

In the work Case study, loosely based on Aristide Malliol, there is some depth to the history of the model Dina Vierny. During our walks along the border between Catalonia and France one day we came across the Musée Maillol, located in the foothills of the Pyrenees near Banyuls sur Mer, quite by chance.
In the museum garden sits a powerful sculpture of a seated woman, where Dina Vierny sat as a model. Her motley background, to say the least, made a strong impression on me. Raised in Bessarabia, now Moldova, in a Jewish family, she came to Paris in the mid-twenties. At the age of 15, she met Aristide Maillol and soon became his model and muse. During the German occupation, she joined the partisans and then, with great success, smuggled refugees across the border to Spain near the mountain pass where I used to do my hikes in the 80s.

During a visit to MOMA in New York in 2014, I saw Dina Vierny again, now as the model for the brutally executed sculpture La Rivière. Back home in Stocka, I tackled a paraphrase of this striking artwork.

Art Research is a very free interpretation of Christian Eriksson's sculpture of the same name, located on the right side of the National Museum's entrance. At the time of the major renovation, it was carefully wrapped in layers upon layers of construction plastic. Based on a simple mobile phone photo, I spent six months trying to depict and understand this mysterious sculpture. My imagination took off in all directions. When it was "unveiled" one day, the token fell down and the knowledge of its shape and name gave the finished painting another unexpected dimension.