R&D | Stene Projects, Fredrik Hofwander ’Take My Hand’

Take My Hand And let your eye be caressed by the graphite , which , like watered silk and polished steel , creates seductive surfaces . The thin lines are so close that they become hard to distinguish . Above the dark valleys of graphite the blank paper appears to rise as white banks . This is a sublime graphite painting , serious and playful at the same time .

Light floods through the images , in the grey - shimmering haze in which the particles of the air seem to be attached to the granularity of the graphite , as well as in the silk - black fire - lit works . However , the light is imaginary – over - exposed , illuminated , spotlighted . It takes us into the burning focus of the works , into other worlds .

We are carefully guided into different environments through openings , windows , doors or roads lined by trees or buildings . The suggestive comfort of the pine forest and the subtle stillness of the city are illusions , like documents of our time . The indeterminate and the dissolved become reflections and counter - images that play with our vision .

A snowy owl regards us calmly and quietly from its vantage point on a fence . Silently it gazes downwards , and the perspective is reversed . Who is watching what ? Who is watched by whom ? The figures that populate the images are immobile . The snowy owl , however , captures my attention and I find it difficult to take my eyes off it .

In some of the images , Fredrik Hofwander has introduced pictorial elements that assume the character of emblems . They may be thought of as decoration but they are also comments that create a distance to the otherwise illustrative expression of the works . This is communication on several levels and suddenly we are faced with the fact that we have to create meaning ourselves .

Every work is a world in itself , with a very special presence . You may remain a viewer but you may also choose to enter into them with your own experience , in order , perhaps , to come out on the other side . Or you will stay there – stuck in the physical materiality of the graphite – eternally engrossed . I , for one , am dazed and want more . ( Annika Gunnarsson )