Galleri Olsson
2004Hrönir
Solo exhibition at Galleri Olsson, Stockholm.
24 paintings depicting imaginary icescapes were installed in a gallery space together with a 16mm film made from the paintings projected on to a freestanding film screen.
All the paintings were based on a failed “mother painting” (4x5 ft), a painting that was never fully resolved. Here the layers were explored sideways instead. Subtle changes were made from painting to painting. The 24 paintings made up the 24 layers of these attempts presented sideways. One section, the upper right corner, remained somewhat similar from painting to painting. This area was the part that was considered successful in the original painting and was therefore repeated in each new painting.
Each of the 24 paintings, also made up one frame in a one second long (24 frames/second) 16mm film. The film, which is looped and projected with 2 seconds clear film (slug) between the one-second footage, is presented together with the paintings.
The titled of the show, Hrönir, referred to Jorge Luis Borges’ fictive story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (published 1940), in which hrönir are duplicates of objects that have a purity of form that the originals do not possess.