Contemporary Art & Design presents Martin Wickström | October 27–28
"Waterboys"
In the auction painting "Waterboys" (2023), Martin Wickström brings together urban architecture and an enigmatic waterscape in a composition characterised by striking contrasts and a cinematic presence. Against a dark façade punctuated by illuminated windows, a flat-bottomed boat carrying white-clad figures emerges, surrounded by intensely green water and lush vegetation.
In the painting, Wickström demonstrates his artistic skill in the encounter between the city’s rigorous geometry and the organic forms of nature. The brightly illuminated words ST SONG allude to Wickström’s mother’s favourite song. She passed away while he was working on the exhibition. The letters ST may also be read as a reference to LASTand FIRST. The boat journey, meanwhile, might be interpreted as a tribute to Wickström’s mother’s passage along the River Styx to Hades.
Wickström’s artistic practice is characterised by a distinctive visual language in which photorealistic precision meets the aesthetics of Pop Art and the visual references of popular culture. With a keen sensitivity to colour, light and composition, he transforms familiar motifs into images that balance recognition with estrangement.
The painting "Waterboys" was exhibited in "Last Song (Based on True Events)" at GSA Gallery in Stockholm in 2023, Wickström’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition presented new works rooted in personal experience, memory and the changes that accompany life. Loss and generational transition formed a biographical backdrop to the presentation, while the title points to the relationship between lived experience and artistic expression.
Martin Wickström was born in 1957 in Finspång and lives and works in Stockholm. He studied at the Gerlesborg School of Fine Art from 1977 to 1981 and at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm from 1982 to 1987. Since his debut in 1983, he has exhibited regularly in Sweden and internationally. His work is held in the collections of, among others, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Gothenburg Museum of Art, Malmö Art Museum and EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art.
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