Graduation Show, Galleri Rotor, 6/4-14/4 2002  

 

The Kanser Wall   The Great Underground Empire   Hjällbo  
  For my graduation show I focused on three different periods from my past, seeing them in relation to the present. In the inner room I had constructed a labyrinthine toyscape underneath a table. Upon the table was a cardboard model of the house I lived in as a child in California, where my family moved in 1983, when I was ten years old. The toys used were both from my time in America (mostly the Star Wars stuff) and from my childhood on Hisingen, in Gothenburg, Sweden (Lego building bricks and Playmobile figures and models). The drawings and paintings surrounding the toyscape described experiences from both California and Hisingen.
In the main room was one wall with drawings and paintings relating to when I moved back to Sweden from California (at the age of fifteen), living in Hjällbo, Gothenburg. It dealt with the onset of puberty and the difficulty of relating to an environment very foreign to myself. Containing references to computer games, comic books and indie rock it charted the influence of these things on me over the years, seeing them all coalesce in an interest in the visual arts, especially expressionistic painting and the art of the mentally ill.
On the opposite wall was a sprawling presentation of my early 20's, having graduated from high school and finding a community of like-minded people equally interested in punk, indie rock, alternative books, movies, comics and art. Immersing myself in this newfound world, I played in a band named "Kartoffell Menschen Trio", whose music could be heard softly emmanating from the bass amp placed by the wall. Mixing drawings, photographs, notes and other scraps both from that time and recollections from the present, it presented my first conscious attempt at a self-realization within the realms of art and culture.
A large yellow and blue painting (the same colors as the swedish flag), "Heja Pizza i Hjällbo", brought all these worlds together and fused them in the present.
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