Exhibitions | Per Wizén

Still Life

2024, Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Stockholm

Pearl necklace. Shining pearls with their peculiar glow, like drops of mist. A necklace torn from someone’s neck, and dropped to the dark parquet floor. The young man seen in profile is bending over the necklace, supporting himself on his right arm, watching the necklace keenly? – but his eyes are closed. It looks more as if he is trying out the smell of the pearls. Do pearls have a smell? Sometimes a hint of perfume might linger around a pearl necklace. His dress is green, from emerald to greyish green hues. The fabric looks like silk, the style might be from the baroque. His neck is exposed, as are parts of his shoulder and his collarbone. The light on his chestnut-coloured hair and pale face is theatrical, it seems to be directed at him straight from the left, like a headlight sitting on the floor.

If you don’t know the dual meaning of ‘pearl necklace’, a momentary indiscretion must be admitted. Semen dropped on the neck or the chest of a lover is sometimes and by some called by this poetical euphemism. Pearl necklace. Thus, the boy leaning over the necklace on the floor takes on a more dubious meaning. You might think of it as a picture of sexual longing, the devotion of a lover to the object of his love. You might think of it as the aftermath of an encounter of lovers. Or yet, a moment of sexual arousal. But, if you prefer a chimney pipe to be a chimney pipe, or a cigar a cigar, just think of it as a necklace dropped on the floor by someone too much in a hurry to notice their loss.

Death, be not proud. I want to to tell this straight to the face of Death: You have no power, you might grin over your last conquest, but you’re so weak, easier to break than a string of pearls, frailer than an old man, grinning still, through the mist of his demented mind.

This peculiar skull shaped from pearls is placed on this same parquet floor we met in Pearl Necklace I. The wooden blocks are all in a warm reddish tone, some paler, others darker. The depth of the space is unclear, a dark shadow falls like a drape in the background. The skull is made from pearls meticulously placed to create a minimal sense of relief, of depth. They are all irregular in size. A broken necklace lies in front of it, not exactly like crossed femur bones, but not far from it.

Pearl necklace. Death. Sex was never without risk, disease has since long been the unwanted spice of erotic encounters. Once syphilis was the great threat, the reaper of physical beauty, mental health and ultimately life. In the 1980s the HIV virus and the fatal aids disease broke into our consciousness; the gay plague that soon proved not to be just affecting gay people. Sex and sorrow became bedfellows once more, a broken string of sorrow strewn across a whole community, until braking medicines were found that could stop the pandemic and save the lives of people affected. Death, thou shalt die.

An encounter. But of what kind? The two men are involved in an interaction that might be brotherly (“you have my back”), imperative (“are you with us or not?”), in confidence (“this stays between us”) or other possible ways. Look at their gazes: you can’t see neither of the men’s eyes, but the one at the back with a light tan on his skin is likely addressing the other with his gaze. The other is not yet responding. He is looking down, maybe just listening, searching for words, maybe in embarrassment, maybe hesitating in the face of a challenge he wasn’t prepared for. Is this a picture of innocence facing experience?

More than usual, this scene is a tripartite affair. The young men might be avoiding each other’s – and our – gazes. But we are watching them, like peeping Toms, from a safe distance. We form a geometric figure, to be precise an isosceles triangle, the base being the short distance between the young men’s heads.

What sort of space are they occupying? That’s hard to say, the depth is minimal, or then it is just very dark, and the only light is directed at the two men. Theatre comes to mind again, but also painting, with the dramatic contrasts between the human skin tones, shadows and a dark backdrop, which takes on a greenish tone to the right. A heavy drape, or a space losing its depth into darkness.

With all the focus placed on the two men, the background an indistinctive darkish blur, the work does also connect to photography, as when you adjust the aperture of the camera to achieve a minimal depth of focus. It is on the one hand painting, on the other photography. Both apply to the slick surface mounted behind a glass.

Text Pontus Kyander

Photo Carl Henrik Tillberg

Undercurrents

2022,Moderna Museet, Malmö // Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Stockholm

In this exhibition, Moderna Museet Malmö presents new works by Per Wizen (b. 1966). The pieces were created in the wake of a journey back into the artist's own childhood that was set off by his discovery of some long-forgotten Disneyland magazines from the 1970s in an attic.

Through the lens of popular cultural images, Wizén invites us into some colourful fantasies based on Disney's versions of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. The two characters have in common that they confront worlds that lie beyond the known, the illuminated, the rational - worlds of opportunity but also of darkness. As always in Wizen's complex artistry, these new works are intimately linked with earlier ones, delving deeper into certain aspects

The large-scale photographs are based on collages made up of tens of thousands of image fragments or pieces arranged by the artist in an extremely complex and time-consuming process. New worlds are created based on existing images. Adventure stories and a return to his own childhood form layers in these new works, but beneath the innocent and playful surfaces lurks something disconcerting.

Wizen's working method relies on a strict set of self-imposed rules, precision, and great patience. In the course of working with his collages, Wizen keeps the whole of the new picture in mind while simultaneously concentrating on the details. The process may be likened to deep meditations that open the door for something unexpected and dark to emerge - something the intellect cannot grasp. It is there beyond the words that the artist's world and the observer's world meet.

Per Wizen lives and works in Malmö. His work has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions in Sweden, Finland, the United States, and several other countries. Undercurrents is Per Wizén's first solo show at Moderna Museet. Examples of the artist's work are included in the collections of a number of Swedish and international museums.

Text Iris Müller-Westermann

Photo Helene Toresdotter