The Incomprehensible Comprehensibility — The Royal Academy of Fine Arts 2012

The Incomprehensible Comprehensibility

Sivert Lindblom, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Galleries, Stockholm, October 6 – November 4, 2012 Text: Niels Hebert Stockholm October 16, 2012 © Niels Hebert

Sivert Lindblom takes an original approach to the halls of The Royal Academy of Fine Arts as he exhibits around a hundred watercolors alongside sculptures and objects he has created over the years. A movement arises between the images on the walls and the forms on the floor, as the watercolors contain elements from the room's three-dimensional design.

In the watercolors, the artist studies the interplay of forces in space, in the character of planes and surfaces, and in the presence of objects. This may sound obscure, but the watercolors seem to be rooms within a vast laboratory, whose roof the artist lifts to show how reality is born, or in his own words, how "forms and voids charge spatialities, contexts, and situations." Sivert Lindblom debuted in the 60s as a sculptor in the Rodin tradition. The motifs partly belonged to an antique sphere, even if Venus remained unfinished and Nike's wings took on a life of their own. Then came his turned silhouettes in wood and plastic. The many public works he has created over five decades are convincing proof of his sense for the possibilities of space. In "Live Show" at Moderna Museet in 1974, the artist himself appeared as a cast of himself, seated. Now the figure takes positions in many places and at different scales, like a mysterious observer of the watercolors' flow from the 60s to the smaller sculptures in the suite "Kofes" (objects that do not represent anything).

On the floor, near some watercolors, lie objects with direct references to the image's content. In the watercolors, the objects are supportive, isolated, subjected to tensions, or floating like spheres. There are trees pruned like cake slices, walls and planks, foundations and supports, and black lines for forces, direction, or obstacles. Often there is a light base of carefully worked earth. One sees amorphous forms that could be bodies, shadows, or stones, surfaces blue like water or sky, tile-clad walls with sometimes pointed corners, densely placed planks, and small areas like backyards… but never an idyll. Sometimes military order prevails, sometimes claustrophobic crowding.

Sivert Lindblom's many unidentified objects raise the question of surrealism. But a descent into the subconscious does not occur; rather, sidelong glances examine the stream of incomprehensible disorder of events, objects, encounters, and forces. They can flock together into something comprehensible, only to soon continue their chaotic journey into the unknown for us. The thought lingers that everything incomprehensible will at some point become comprehensible, just as everything comprehensible has its incomprehensible passages.

Photo: Arbetet