With these drawings I am examining the notion of self as an evocation of the whole of one's history, not as one lives it in act or circumstance, but as one's imagination creates it, in the mind and passions. Reality is not simply the world as it exists outside our minds but the product of the imagination as it shapes the world. Because it is constantly changing as we attempt to find imaginatively satisfying ways to perceive the world, reality is an activity, not a static object. We put together parts of ourselves in an attempt to make it seem coherent. To make sense of the world is thus to construct a world view of ourselves through an active exercise of the imagination.

In these drawings almost mythological scenarios play upon this. Walking the plank, buried alive, or taking on history's tales, the figures examine the notions of fate and inevitability. A drawing glows as nothing in life ever can. Upon it the language of desire materializes absolute, total. Empty one world and exchange it for a new sultry vision, more voluptuous. Go deep within the labyrinth's weltering tides carrying a sword, and come out holding a severed head. Bite the necks of Baudelaire's birds. Bring Shakespeare's Ophelia back to life.

Life is such a meager substitute. Drawing is the only way to summon up the physical picture of a fleeting mirage, devoid of all distractions and unhinged from circumstance, mere history. Yet within their strange wizardry there is something lost, intolerable, foretold, and come to pass, some ancient magic that I cannot say. A raw glow of white paper always accompanies the figures, exposing all that has disappeared. This is the nature of isolation. What we can know of our own lives is in fact as limited as what we know of the world's past. Yet the body itself, being the first and final object, continues to radiate in the mind's eye, like a magic lamp. In the end these drawings achieve what memory and the body cannot, a kind of immortality.

 

born: 1976, Stockholm, Sweden

education

Valand School of Fine Arts, Sweden, Guest Student under Fulbright Grant, 1999
Maryland Institute, College of Art, BFA, 1998

selected awards/honors

Individual Artist Fellowship, Miami Cultural Division, 2009
Miami Herald Art Basel Competition Winner, 2008
South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, Broward Cultural Division, 2006
Fulbright Scholar for Sweden, 1999

selected publications

New American Paintings, Featured Artist, 2009, 2007
Miami Modern Luxury Magazine, Artist Feature (interview, photos), December 2009
Florida International Magazine, Artist Feature (interview, photos), November 2009
Flagpole Magazine (review), October 2009

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Spinello Gallery: this may be the last time I don't know, Miami, FL 2008
Rocket Projects: 373 sounds for anne sexton: Miami, FL 2006
Gallery Geskel: Fighting It Out: Gothenburg, Sweden 2000

selected group shows

Museum of Contemporary Art: Optic Nerve XI, Miami, FL, 2009
Farside Gallery: Full House, Miami, FL 2009
Columbus Museum of Art: Columbus Biennial, Columbus, GA 2008
Spinello Gallery: Pulse Art Fair/Art Basel, Miami, FL 2008