In Darkness, the Embrace of the Streets

Nov 18 - Dec 19, 2010

A factory chimney. A high-rise building that someone is jumping off. A flag. Our gaze wanders and shifts from one detail to the next, all of which are covered and saturated by discharges, static, something chaotic and uncontrollable. We are presented with a direct struggle against a process of reduction and minimalism, a movement towards an investigation of the baroque, teeming with as much detail and seemingly just as animated as the world around us.

Perception and memory are given a central role in Victor Rosdahl’s new paintings. Memories of the appearance and ambience of different settings and situations are sifted through and whirl around us. In his art, Rosdahl has consistently endeavoured to investigate that which exists on the peripheries and to give it a voice. In his paintings, we can make out the name of a freight ship, a mosque, the branches of a tree, graffiti, a person at work; concrete details of everyday life from different eras, all of which create their own stories. The surface of the painting has become a kind of maelstrom that has caught the artist’s impressions and ideas and sucked them down into the deep to be mixed and preserved, layer upon layer, creating a very personal interpretation of reality and history. The past, the present and possible futures are all materialised in the same moment and in the same space, each becoming entangled in the others.

The paintings are made on anything from found plastic bags to paint-soaked cloth towels. These materials that are used as the ground for the paintings often have their own story and connection to the places that are depicted, thereby creating a coalescence of time and space. In terms of models of inspiration, there is a resonance with the works of Anselm Kiefer, Vincent Van Gogh and Hieronymous Bosch. The artist’s own photographs, postcards, found objects and record covers are other important sources of inspiration.

Viktor Rosdahl was born in 1980 and lives in Malmö. He studied at the Royal College of Art in Stockholm and at the Art Academy in Malmö. He has received fellowship grants and awards from the Edstrand Foundation, the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation and from the Swedish National Arts Council. The exhibition In darkness, the embrace of the streets is Rosdahl's second exhibition at Christian Larsen. A large presentation of his works will open at Lund Konsthall on the 27th of November this year. Rosdahl’s work is also currently included in Moderna Museet’s exhibition Modernautställningen 2010.

Other Exhibitions:
Viktor Rosdahl
Viktor Rosdahl
Viktor Rosdahl