"Kurtz"
Signed Jan Håfström and dated 2001 verso. Pannå 100 x 100 cm.
Alkuperä - Provenienssi
Private Collection, London.
Via Niklas Belenius to a private collection, Sweden.
Näyttelyt
Liljevalchs konsthall, Stockholm, "Mörkrets Hjärta", 18 April - 21 May 2009.
Kirjallisuus
Mårten Castenfors (ed.), "Jan Håfström - Book of the dead", 2009, illustrated full-page p. 154.
Johanna Ekström & Niclas Östlind, "Jan Håfström - The Eternal Return", 2008, illustrated p. 5.
Muut tiedot
In the exhibition catalogue from Liljevalchs konsthall, 2009, one can read the following:
"The paintings Marlow and Kurtz (2001) depict the same motif. We see the head of a swimming man who is about to be drowned by the surrounding water. He struggles not to sink beneath the surface. But despite the men resembling each other exactly, Håfström has given them different names. They represent the good and the evil figures in Joseph Conrad's novel The Heart of Darkness. As they are presented, they cannot be told apart. Is it also irrelevant who is who?*
The similarity of the paintings makes their significance uncertain: Perhaps the titles are merely a fine ruse, laid out to conceal the paintings' true purpose? The decisive difference between the images is colour. Kurtz is painted in black and white. Marlow in red and yellow. Dark and light areas stand against each other. The simplification is far-reaching, and the paintings exist in a borderland between figuration and abstraction.
So what do the paintings depict? Perhaps the representation of the water's surface is the true motif. The unfathomable pattern that spreads across the images and draws the gaze. The spectacular surface negates the significance of all details. Causes everything to flow into one another. Just like the ducks in the Swedish artist Bruno Liljefors' painting, from which Jan Håfström has borrowed the pattern, the men are camouflaged by nature's 'protective similarity.'
Lisää taiteilijasta Jan Håfström
Ever since the 60s, Jan Håfström has been an important and clearly shining star in Swedish art and culture. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm and painted "The Forest", 1968 and later "Grandmother", 1972, both of which have become classics and can be seen in the Moderna Museet's collection.
In 2001, he surprised the Swedish art public with the exhibition "Walker", at Färgfabriken in Stockholm. Out of the abstract, quiet, minimalist comes Mr. Walker and his fictitious, eventful world. Elements of childhood adventures and images depicting the disguised Mr. Walker aka the Phantom are in the paintings. This time in the form of cut-out, enlarged details. Like scenery that for once has the main role, the stories and adventures return in fragments and form a new story, about how it was and how it came to be. But Walker also moves in the same world as A. Böcklin's "Island of Death" 1880s and Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" from 1902. In the darkness of romance, death is fought and the creative power of life is allowed to win and triumph. In the story about Walker, Håfström combines the abstract canvases and the moods of the objects with the stories that were decisive and strongly influenced his life. The journey of childhood comes back in stripped down and renewed form.
Lue lisääLisätietoja ja kuntoraportit
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