Alex Colard

Cecilia Hillström Gallery – Per Wizén – Undercurrents – November 11 to December 17, 2022 – Hudiksvallsgatan 8, 2nd floor – Open Tuesday–Friday 11–18, Saturday 12–16 and by appointment.

ABOUT the exhibition

Per Wizén works with paper collages built from art historical images deeply embedded in our culture. Thousands of details are literally cut out and constructed into a new whole, making up works closely related to the original image. In this meticulous process, the content of the work shifts in relation to the source, pinpointing hidden meanings and underlying tensions.

For many years Wizén was preoccupied with the Renaissance and Baroque eras. In his ongoing series of works, Per Wizén focuses on Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the many iconic illustrations of the tale. From the original drawings by John Tenniel to Disney’s version of the story, Wizén uses the visual mechanisms and DNA of the original artworks and transfers the material from the past to the contemporary, capturing all layers in between in his fantastical works.

Per Wizén (b. 1966) holds an MFA from Malmö Art Academy. Solo shows include Moderna Museet Malmö in 2022, Cecilia Hillström Gallery, and CHART Art Fair, Copenhagen, in 2019, Skissernas Museum – Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, Lund in 2014, and Malmö Art Museum in 2008. His work has also been featured in the touring exhibition Diversity United – Contemporary European Art in Berlin and Moscow, Liljevalchs, Stockholm, Amos Rex, Helsinki, Borås Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, National Museum of Art, Stockholm, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Eskilstuna Art Museum, Turku Art Museum, Åbo, and at Centre Culturel Suédois, Paris, to name a few. He is represented in the collections of Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, Moderna Museet, Malmö Art Museum, Borås Art Museum, Public Art Agency Sweden, Region Dalarna and Stockholm konst.

ABOUT the exhibition

Cecilia Hillström Gallery is pleased to present our third solo exhibition with Per Wizén (b. 1966), featuring new works recently presented at Moderna Museet Malmö in a solo show curated by Iris Müller-Westermann.
Per Wizén works with paper collages built from art historical images deeply embedded in our culture. Thousands of details are literally cut out and constructed into a new whole, making up works closely related to the original image. The new large-scale works presented in the exhibition are based on paper collages made up of scenes from Disneyland magazines about Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan from the 70s. Wizén takes hold of these familiar visual stories, where normal boundaries and structures are dissolved, and presents a continuation of the land of fantasy filled with both possibilities and threats.

In earlier works centred around the story of Alice in Wonderland, Wizén focused on Alice and her relationship with the other characters. In the new series of works, the characters are completely absent from the scenery. In the work The Lost Boys, a familiar yet estranged bedroom appears void of its inhabitants. The smaller and larger tents in the room show evidence of play. Only the open window with the curtain blowing in the wind reveals that a more serious event might have taken place, pointing to the prospect of adventure but also of loss or rebellion. The title The Lost Boys referring to the characters living in Neverland in the Peter Pan story can also allude to more ominous contemporary references.

In Wizén’s meticulous and time-consuming practice, the subtle yet essential shift in the original expression is important. The mesmerising vast and empty forest in Blue Hunt holds a quality of something unknown and also uncanny – a recurring theme in Wizén‘s work. The fish-eye perspective of that of a surveillance camera gives away that there is something more to the motive. Wizén opens up the image with the at first sight innocent surface to the contemporary and addresses issues of a much more complex nature. By using the visual mechanisms and DNA of the original stories, Wizén brings forth hidden meanings and underlying tensions in his fantastical works.

ABOUT the gallery

Cecilia Hillström Gallery was founded in 2012 in the gallery district at Hudiksvallsgatan in Stockholm and is owned and managed by Cecilia Hillström. The gallery represents both well-established and emerging artists, who have been represented by the gallery throughout their careers. Having recently relocated to a larger space, Cecilia Hillström Gallery may now present parallel exhibitions.
Gallery artists work in a variety of media; painting, photography, sculpture, video or interdisciplinary projects. A focus on the artistic process, strong contextual ambitions and inherent materiality are key components of the artists’ practice. Cecilia Hillström has successfully launched emerging Swedish artists. At the same time, it represents artists who over their careers have exhibited at prominent Nordic institutions such as Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Malmö Art Museum, Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway, as well as at institutions such as Whitechapel Gallery, London, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Walker art Center, Minneapolis, PS1 and Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York.
The gallery frequently arranges artist talks and seminars and co-produces artist books and other publications in connection with its exhibitions.
The gallery does not take responsibility for unsolicited artist submissions.
https://chgallery.se/

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