The painting offered at auction was exhibited in Tommy Hilding’s twelfth solo exhibition at Galleri Magnus Karlsson. The exhibition "Escapeland" featured paintings in which the present and the past converge, and a contemporary visual language collides with nineteenth-century landscape painting.

Björn Springfeldt wrote the following text for the exhibition catalogue:

“Under en kupa av ljus.

When visiting an artist’s studio, it is always interesting to see which postcards and other reproductions are pinned to the walls, often revealing unexpected connections to fellow artists. This is not the case with Tommy Hilding. His minimalist studio is filled with his own works. But then, in his home, landscape paintings are everywhere: lovingly rendered and technically brilliant depictions of a paradisiacal natural world devoid of people. All dating from the nineteenth century.

One is reminded of the philosopher and visionary Emanuel Swedenborg, who, upon witnessing the dawn of industrialisation, in which human beings were reduced to slaves of the machine, believed that we were now committing the Second Fall of Man. And of the philosopher Henry David Thoreau, an ecologist before ecology existed as a discipline, who saw humanity’s relationship with nature as a sign of spiritual communion with something greater, and who viewed our thoughtless destruction of the natural world with sorrow.

Surely, by now, our view of the world around us as an inexhaustible resource for ‘development’ must have reached a dead end? Surely, the recognition that we depend on a balanced coexistence with all living things within the ecological system should take centre stage and form the foundation of our actions?

In the new paintings presented by Tommy Hilding in this exhibition, there is a justified sense of unease and sorrow at the way we continue to relate to nature despite the overwhelming body of knowledge available to us. Technically, his paintings are just as brilliant and detailed as the works of the older artists whose paintings surround him. Nor is there any assertion of the personal here; instead, an objective gaze and a precisely rendered visual world lend his works a universal relevance and weight.

In some paintings, he incorporates quotations from works by Marcus Larsson depicting waterfalls and untamed nature. This earlier artist, too, viewed humanity’s eagerness to tame nature with suspicion and warned against hubris in paintings where burning ships, driven helplessly by storm winds, are destined to be smashed against the rocks.

Tommy Hilding conveys our estrangement from nature by presenting his subjects as seen through a window, or as though viewed through a veil of haze. The beauty of the paintings and the temptation to explore the spaces they open up are complicated by the uncertainty of whether the world we might enter could also offer a way out again.

Like all truly great art, these works offer no prescriptions or escape routes. Instead, they raise more questions, stimulate thought, create a need for dialogue and awaken a thirst for knowledge. They prompt us to consider responsibility, both in the small and large matters of our own lives, as well as possible scenarios for the future. They also raise questions about our way of life and the growing loss of a sense of connection and of an understanding of our own insignificance in the face of the universe as a whole. Like that dome of light through which the city deprives us of our connection with the starry sky.”

Text by Björn Springfeldt

Source: gallerimagnuskarlsson.com