038.eng

Project 038. Between dreams and reality

In 2002 and 2005 my parents passed away. As a speedy consequence there was a recurrence of this heart-rending process of sorrow, assortment, empting, excavation, and conclusion which started up again etc. During the course of this process I reflected about how things which had been significant for my parents during their lifetime, and consequently for me too, suddenly lost their meaning. Still, it was hard to throw them, sell them or give them away. At the turn of spring I was talking to my friends Olle and Marie-Louise at Gallery Nord in Orebro. I hadn’t exhibited there in a while so we decided on an exhibition date because now we were going to do it.

I decided to just work with things which remained over after the death of my parents in combination with ink drawings and new graphic art which symbolised the process of recollection. I called the graphic edition “Memory Mites”[minneskvalster]. The exhibition grew exciting and consisted in the main of “assemblage”, things gathered together, which become other things, one might say. A way to challenge my own creativity. My Mother was very anchored in the present while my Father periodically lived in the world of poetry and dreams. I grew up somewhere in between there, and became what I became.

project 038

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JOHAN FERNER STRÖM