Westra Aros by Treignac Projet

ANDREAS WALDÉN WESTRA AROS

A N D R E A S W A L D É N W E S T R A A R O S

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

WESTRA AROS / SAM BASU

WORKS

CONVERSATION / SAM BASU & ANDREAS WALDÉN

NATURENS RIGOR MORTIS / SARA WALKER

INTRODUCTION

hile preparing to approach Andreas Waldén’s work through writing, I was surprised to find how the paintings before me began to change and show an altogether different physiognomy when placed before the challenge of producing a text. I had the opportunity of being with the paintings for many days but the understanding I had of the works shifted and buckled when that experience was allowed to grow through the process of writing. Andreas Waldén’s work is a sustained meditation on the nature and dynamics of space through the special question of the space of art. He offers through his work a proposition about how the way we approach his work might be expressed. He offers an architecture of the thought and physical expression of an artistic idea, and specifically his art as an idea. Through the evocation of vectors and mathematics he maps a belief in the place of the Arts and considers human culture as a concrete definable structure. However, approaching the paintings with writing in mind other relationships come to the fore to dominate the work. The succession of titles that sew the works together and reinforce the subtle groupings of paintings split off and form their own world. They circle the enunciated paintings underlining their mute presence. Here the relationship between title and work is less about informing, cataloguing or creating clues. It is about structuring a second web of ideas, thoughts and images that appear between the titles in a literary space. This double evocation of literary and visual spaces leads us back to the space that we inhabit. It leads us back to all the spaces we attempt to occupy with people we wish to share with or resist or defy. Andreas Waldén’s work is a meditation on space, measured in lengths of a lifetime spent thinking about space.

SB The works presented in this book were first shown at Treignac Projet, France 2010.

The Harbour

The Black Sea

III

Karta

Almagest

The Moon

Split Vision

VII

The Soulseller

VIII

Antonius

The Walk

A Blaze in the Northern Sky

The Garden

XII

April

XIII

Inverted Revelation

XIV

The Serpent

WESTRA AROS /SAM BASU

ll beginnings depart1 and leave the harbour; a safe space, a pause on a great journey, a moment to reflect on where we have been and the end we are approaching. A little postponement while the murderous crew cast cargo onto barnacled oak and rust seeping hulls. Then out into the sea with the brackish estuary water that is readyseasoned with its fate.

gantry crane arcs overhead. All motion is coordinated through schedule and manifest. The harbour, like this young man, is a body of water, enclosed in the arms of the earth or perhaps walls of stone. It receives ships and waves and sends goods and accounts between land and land and seas. The young man knows this will be a long voyage and he is used to them. This is just a part of a longer passage that will bring him closer to the beckoning respite that he is avoiding. Being away from all the things he calls familiar is building in him a place he will begin to call home. From his bag he removes an unopened letter3 and takes it on deck.

A young man drops a light canvas bag onto his cabin berth and loosens the lace of his shoe. He eases a finger between sock and leather to slacken the cords. In the cabin is a small glassfronted cabinet holding a selection of papers and books. On top of the books lie a rolled chart and a pile of maps tied with string. Peering2 in, he can see that they are not for this voyage.

From the deck the man watches the harbour as a seagull does; flat like a map but open to winds and change. The sea spray feels fresh and jewels his eye lashes. He wipes his face dry with his sleeve and leans on the rust-stained rail as if to take a surer sighting. The letter remains sealed in his pocket. He wipes his brow again and thinks of the sweat-salt and sand-grit of long days labouring on the land.

The harbour is a divided place. It is between elements, between connections and locations, sea and land, in a tension of ships, piers and docks. Wharfs charge and discharge and the 1. Departure, shifts from shore to ship from beginning as an end to beginning as the end. At the dividing point between shared lives, between betrayals and kisses salty with sea spray the first space begins to emerge. 2. Bosch warns against a regard-turnedgape lest the magicianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s accomplice lift your purse.

3. The Chinese had a postal service in the Zhou Dynasty, and later Marco Polo reported on the relaying posts of Kublai Kahn. Ordinary citizens, however, had to rely on couriers or Min Hsin Chu.

These impressions are coming back to him from the world of his pocketed letter. Looking out to the receding harbour with the sun behind him he spies his shadow standing on the outlined shadow-ship cast out onto the waves. An outline without sun, a dark body filled with salt water. Like the II Black Sea.

the world, gathering information, accumulating, adjusting and erasing it. III Through the years we master the ways a maps can speak to us. How can this flat rectangle2 inform and guide our journey better, when will we be able to say we are not lost? Sometimes a map can only reveal the depths of our ignorance like a map of the sea, and a map for the sea.

Argonauts adventure there as if it were the whole world. Myths and legends are wrestled from monsters, and stored in the Great Epics where trade routes and conquest mingle. The young man reflects that both harbour and Black Sea cling to their worlds entirely; they are birthplace and beginning and opening scene. But the Bosporus leaks this infant universe out into Aegean, Mediterranean and then Atlantic Ocean. Children age, ships set sail and curtains fall. Here begin the little steps to trigonometry from the stars and a hymn to Poseidon1.

The young man clears some space on his bed and opens out one of the maps he has removed from the cabinet. It is not named, but has numbers indicating its place in the world. He follows the coastline but cannot recognize any features. It might be from anywhere; it could show somewhere he knows well seen through eyes that are quietly becoming foreign. The key to locating yourself in the vastness of the universe is held in the great almanac of fixed stars. The turning ellipses and spiralling arcs of sun and moon pass through latitude and time in trigonometry, from Hipparchus through Ptolemy, from Greek to Arabic to Latin.

Celestial navigation requires that you fix sights on both horizon and stars in a divided gaze marked out in degrees. A fingerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s width at arms length counts as one gradation. Atlases and charts compile the shifting of sand-banks and the schedule of turning celestial objects so that we may be located. Maps arrange

The great Greek work, the Almagest, IV steered mighty fleets from Galley to 2. Curious how we cling to this flat format, demanding more and more from it, coding it in colours and floating windows. Rethinking how we read its face, starting from scratch to arrive again at its level utility.

1. As worlds enlarge, the tools for navigating them must expand their reach. As tools expand their reach the world grows to escape them.

of coves and bays, hidden beaches and natural ports. His eyes wander up and down the coasts. With each pass he discovers new features as if the orbs of his eyes were twin moons pulling tides and shifting sands on those ink printed shores.

Armada, through a thousand years. In thirteen books of star catalogues, spherical trigonometry and equinoxes, ancient Ptolemy compiled Greek wisdom. The Earth does not move and is the centre of the cosmos with the zodiac spinning around it. The universe can be known through the equations that bind it, our inner universe likewise begins to be exposed and peeled back. Drawn upon from birth by Moon and stars, through month and year, we are V inescapably tattooed with regulations to divine our inner character. The planets and globes pull us like tides. As it is written in heaven so it is inscribed in us.

* First warning. When all the points are fixed, when you can say with total confidence where and where a thing is. When knowledge creeps over the body like a map marking inlets and shallows and X â&#x20AC;&#x201C; know you are already dead.

Each chart is always two charts tying together two worlds. So now we VI must consider not only the space of a thought but also the space in which it is thought. The spaces of an artwork. We are points answering to great magnetic fields of thoughts moving around us, fields that intersect and act through us. How can we know where we are? We look at the horizon, and the stars overhead at the same time.

* Antonius Block3 has gained a short reprieve through a game of chess. The game is played out on a board, there VIII are rules, and there are objectives but the rules do not define the objectives completely. An agreement is made between the two players that throughout the length of the game there will be life, but the end will be final. The game is full of adjournments through which the everyday world slips into the contest.

The voyage is very long and the heaving rhythm of the sea counts the endless sea-hours. Night descends again. All the books in the little cabinet have been read or skimmed through so the young man returns to the charts. Their initial plainness hides an accumulation

3. Antonius Block: This is my hand. I can turn it. The blood is still running in it. The sun is still in the sky and the wind is blowing. And I... I, Antonius Block, play chess with Death.

The board is a map for the game, and the game can never leave the map, but it can be played at greater and greater removes1 slipping into dubious encouragements; of disputes and doubts; the silence of heaven to your endless questions.

VII

this moment on the bed, and sees that there is also no connection between any of these actions. He wanders along with his memories of home, and from there he looks down on himself in his bed in his cabin on this ship lost in the vast belly of the sea adrift in disputed realms of criss-crossing reflections.

The chessboard is the arena of a courageous journey of incalculable permutations. Rule-bound but unfathomable. Are we any less human if finally we have just a set of probabilities to pursue, no deep freedoms, just effects and the impression of will? In the space of all possible calculations, is the sense we have of ourselves poorly traded for the pure perfection of a masterful calculation? If I disappear will I return as a ghostly automaton, rigidly defined and soulless?

From this vantage point characters vague and foggy billow between slight acquaintances and fuzzy relations. He remembers a summer that will not figure in the history of his life. He is Claude Lantier2 in a drenched Parisian street during a downpour. Lightning blazes the night and, turning a page, Paul Cezanne3 is illuminated. From these two perspectives under the sway of the sea swell clock, ClaudE/&paulC. face each other. What is the demand of their interchanged worlds?

CL “I think about myself while taking a walk; each moment strides into the next, and my feelings are part of the very spaces I tread through. I IX walk through the exhibition and the emptiness of abstractions is retreating.

Casting up and down the map’s paper coasts is becoming tiring and, not finding anything tangible, pointless. But stopping means starting something new, and would inevitably lead to the letter he has been carrying. What can follow not finding oneself on a folding landscape? Our traveller decides to lie on the bed and gaze up way beyond the ceiling of his cabin. He recalls event after preceeding event all leading him to

2. Zola’s boy’s obsession with a masterwork drives him to suicide. Better to proceed in lots of little steps, each reflecting the other in recursive play. 3. Cezanne stopped communicating with Zola after he received a copy of L’Œuvre. It was clear that the failing character Claude Lantier was a fictionalisation of Paul Cezanne.

1. A kick under the table, the tapping of fingers, trouble at home or entangled love affairs, they all spill onto the chessboard.

he should get up on deck more often, go chat with the First Mate, learn something about life from those who are living it— Show some sense Claude! You can’t learn about life when you have been summoned…

It is invigorating to be so embodied, stepping from thought to thought to being here looking at pictures and fishing clues from their names.”

PC “The only places that open up are encircled by vectors and equations and rendered here in fleshy paint. What use are the rich, fabricated tapestry of stories that pour from these titles?”

* April hinges winter snaps of cruel cold into spring. Ageing and birth trade, and the long sleep turns into waiting. A hiatus in the moment comes while we search for it, trying to put our finger on it. Our discoveries arrive in XII a place that is already fashioned for them, their expectation deforms them; the black gape of anticipation is filled. Our discoveries precede us and reflect the wants and hopes that form us; we paint the picture of the way we have been painted. Our discoveries reveal XIII our ignorance enclosed in arms of earth.

CL “These names cannot stand still

on the page, they pour into the painting and they pour into us. They join us all together. My heart is pumping cardiogram proof of our existence! They circle in a strange loop like a crowning Aurora, a living return to that shock-inspired moment of vision.” X

PC “Cardiac muscles cycle blood encircling our lives like the wall surrounding an Eden. It is Eden at the exact instant the curse of death, the gift of mortality & the power of knowledge change places and no one notices.”

CL “We will always stand outside

the places of your purity and perfection Paul, and will be glad of it. We might learn from purity, but are freer without it.”

Second warning.

XIV

Claude and Paul spy the young seafarer and turn away to whisper to each other. —Surely it is this evil light that makes him look so old? —No, it is this ceaseless worrying over details…

4. Here it is tempting to drift onto a ghost ship perhaps the one carrying a soil-filled coffin or the Celeste or Dutchman.

WORKS

The Harbour oil on canvas 43x53 cm

The Black Sea oil on canvas 36,3x48 cm

Karta oil on canvas 50,5x66 cm

Almagest

oil on canvas 71,3x71,3 cm

The Moon

oil on canvas 55,8x76 cm

Split Vision oil on canvas 76x50,5 cm

The Soulseller oil on canvas 45,5x61 cm

Antonius

oil on canvas 30x40 cm

The Walk

oil on canvas 45,5x58,3 cm

A Blaze in the Northern Sky oil on canvas 60,5x51 cm

The Garden oil on canvas 36x48,5 cm

April

oil on canvas 20x30 cm

Inverted Revelation oil on canvas 56x45,5 cm

The Serpent oil on canvas 38,5x28 cm

CONVERSATION / SAM BASU & ANDREAS WALDÉN

This conversation took place over two weeks in Treignac, France 2010. Sam Basu: Are your “computer drawing” studio and painting studio the same space? Andreas Waldén: Not necessarily. Even if they’re done in the same studio, they’re done in different head space. SB: How did the MS Paint1 drawings first come about? AW: Back in 2008 when I started using this programme for drawings I was looking for a way to get away from the usual paper and pen medium. Back then I was using pencil, black marker and a very limited selection of coloured pencils. The simplicity in MS Paint suited my way of working. Also it was so quick! I could get an idea down, consider it to be worth saving or not and possibly throw it away faster than it took me to sharpen the pencil. SB: What happens for a drawing to become a painting, how do you choose, how are they prepared? AW: It’s very intuitive. When I prepare for a set of paintings I start making a lot of drawings, maybe a hundred. In the beginning I don’t know in which direction the drawings will take me. The more I make, the more coherent the work seems, the previous drawing gives ideas to the next and so on. When I have enough to feel like it’s a set, I start painting. That usually brings ideas to new drawings and so on. Of course, sometimes a drawing idea doesn’t work as a painting. It was actually the case with Rigor Mortis. It didn’t really work as a smaller painting, but as a wall piece it just came about perfectly.

1. MS Paint is a simple graphics painting programme which is included in all versions of Microsoft Windows.

SB: The paintings represent a month of work, but the drawings existed before this time. What are the differences and similarities in their production? AW: Actually, in the Westra Aros set, none of the drawings existed before the month it took to make them. All drawings and paintings were made during that period. I had a lot of drawings from before that I used as a starting point, but soon enough it became clear that they were useless. They had been done in different places over a certain amount of time, so they didn’t make sense to me in France. SB: Can the drawings exist on their own or are they always only a way to a painting? AW: They can co-exist with the paintings. On their own they are like a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Unintentional biblical reference there... SB: Colour appears very important, but control and austerity seem to be the ways you approach it. The colour harmonies are there, but represented in a cool spectrum. What choices do you consider? AW: Again its a very intuitive process, its just me and the MS paint colour chart. This set is made out of black, white and different shades of grey. I used to be a very colourful painter, I put all the colours in one painting, over and over again. I guess I used up my colour quota... At some point I just wanted to say whatever I say in a more subtle way. Just because you like colour doesn’t mean you need to have orange, neon green, two shades of pink and purple next to each other. Its like having starter, main course and dessert at the same time. Also, my painting always seem to be a reaction to what’s happening around me and I guess I just saw too many filled up canvases. What colours I choose probably comes more from mood and place. Maybe even season. SB: What can this mean? AW: Colour is a reflection, both physically and mentally. SB: Large parts of some of the paintings are of unpainted canvas. When paint is next to canvas and not oil paint, what can this say?

AW: It lets the paint and the canvas work together. For me its a natural way to treat the canvas, only as a place where something is happening, a place to leave traces of a process. Newman asked ”Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? ” but my answer to that is I’m not afraid of white. SB: Smudges and slips are not removed, why is this? AW: They are equally parts of what make up the painting, I don’t see any difference between a smudge and a line that I’ve made. Actually a line in a painting is just a smudge made with a ruler. If I should start cleaning up, I wouldn’t know where to stop! SB: Painting on to a wall, was this very different, or only in scale AW: Only in scale. SB: How does the scale change things? AW: What was interesting to me in this case was the relation between the wall piece and the small paintings. It’s easy to be smitten by grand scale, but I really like trying to say things with small words. SB: It is now destroyed, what does this mean for the other paintings in the series? AW: They were made with no wall painting in mind so I think they are fine. In it’s wall state that image was a part of the show, but the drawing is still there to accompany them. SB: What is geometric space? AW: Well to get down to it, the word geometry means ”to measure the earth”. I guess in a sense this could be used to explain to a certain extent some art production. Is it a kind of measuring that is going on, trying to fix, or understand the world around us? Painting for me has a lot to do with investigation. Every line, mark or shape is a question. Can I go here? Is this going to get me somewhere? How about this? How does this interfere with that and so on. It is always relative.

The lines in my paintings might represent a kind of path or train of thought. Though sometimes they do look like they would be a part of an architectural creation, they still behave as a kind of flat almost printed line or maybe even a part of a letter. I always realize that the lines change. They move in and out of their meaning. They start off as outlines of maybe sculptures or imagined buildings, dream architecture, but then they sometimes change, in the same image and they become roads, paths. The lines are outlines and also they are themselves the construction, they always shift in and out of that. At least they refuse to be fixed. Yes my paintings can somehow be called maps, maps of dreamed architecture, maps of imagined travels, fragments of thoughts. In my painterly practice I have somehow tried to clear out all the virtuous aspects. I use masking tape and a ruler, so when I make that line with a ruler, it is a very forced gesture. I guess you can call that an anti-gesture, but then something else happens when the paint meets the canvas. Something that I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, or choose not to force or fix. SB: What things can happen in the space of art that can not usefully happen else where (as in science for instance)? AW: Love. SB: What is a search for knowledge in Painting? AW: Well as I said before, art making is a kind of search, right? But a search for what? The questions are asked by ourselves. In my own practice, I tend to think of the drawing as a question, the process of painting as research and the painting as the answer or conclusion. The knowledge is baked into a whole. SB: What is it that we move towards when we approach something through art? AW: An understanding of things that cannot be reached from anywhere else, including things that donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even exist anywhere else. SB: You warn that fixing knowledge is death. What is the need to always be thrown forward? What is the need for there to be instability at each stage?

MS Paint

AW: As soon one gets too comfortable there is a risk of stagnation, and when art stagnates it’s dead. It needs to move forward to survive, like the hunted prey, only that here, Art is the prey and the predator at the same time. I mean, Art writes its own rules right? When I paint I always trick myself into situations that are not totally familiar, also when sketching. Its always about finding yourself on new territory, but with a feeling of knowing where to go. It is a very fragile process, Art is a fragile being. SB: The artist alone in his studio is connected to the whole world through the pursuit of art. not as a production, but as a search? AW: If one thinks that all human beings have an instinct to search for..... something, yes, in that way the artist is connected to the whole world, the art spreads out its little tentacles over the globe to hopefully find something that makes sense in relation to itself. It’s a very big thought and perhaps one that is very difficult to have in mind in the studio, especially those days or weeks when nothing seems to happen. It is a lovely thought. The artist is revealing mystic truths to the world that it wasn’t aware of. SB: These paintings were done in France, but you titled the set after an old name for your Swedish home town. How does being away from home affect you? AW: It does affect me of course, but mostly in a positive way. It’s always easier to think in new paths when being away from home. It puts your mind on the edge. SB: You do not live in Sweden either, how does this absence affect the works? AW: I’m a very sentimental person and I have a hard time letting go of things, places. It’s an ongoing search for a home, a solution, an answer I guess.

Studio, Treignac 2009

NATURENS RIGOR MORTIS / SARA WALKER

en måleriska svindeln, den teckenmässiga mångtydigheten. Eller: är mångtydigheten bara synlig och tydlig i titlarna?

Andreas Waldéns senaste bilder uppvisar ett strikt måleri dikterat av ett datorprogram; det är en sida av Waldéns måleri, den andra är den att i princip allt måleri måste ha riktlinjer och redan fastslagna regler för att överhuvudtaget kunna förverkligas, och inom dessa regler blir måleriet fritt. Om det går att tala om frihet i samband med måleri, eller teckning. För det finns kanske ingen frihet, det vill säga: allt måleri förhåller sig till konstnärens syn på det möjliga (och det omöjliga). Andreas Waldén använder sig av MS Paint. Det är hans förutsättning för de senaste målningarna. Det blir ett oerhört koncentrerat måleri. Som diagram med punkter. Dessa punkter tycks vara tullstationer. Linjer möts vid punkter. Det geometriska blir på detta vis oundvikligt. En konstruktivism, eller en arkitektonisk fantasiform. I den raka linjen finns det vetenskapliga. Det icke-romantiska! Fast bara genom hans val av metod – måleriet – visar Waldén att han inte vänder romantiken ryggen. Han låter den måleriska gesten genomgå ett stålbad. Han begränsar linjen och färgen. Tecknet, och det tecknade. Försöker Waldén ta sig förbi problemen med att måla? Är hans metod en kommentar till myten om målaren som fånge i en jakt på gudomlig inspiration? I MS Paint ryms ingen konstnärsmyt. Det är ett trubbigt redskap för skissandet. Waldén tecknar upp former som liknar skulpturskisser. Det finns något omisskännligt Torsten Anderssonskt i dessa kantiga konstruktioner. Det liknar skisser av oförverkligade skulpturer. I det oförverkliga ligger mystiken. Det blir tecken för en form. Blir det teckningar av målningar som i sin tur signalerar skulpturens möjligheter? Många rörelser i samma uttryck.

Titlars anspråk Andreas Waldéns bilder bär alla distinkta titlar. Det är varierade begrepp, och titlarna skrivs omväxlande på engelska och svenska. Att betitla måleri är inte alls utan sin egen indexologi, och sin egen mytbildning. Inte ens en målning med orden Ohne titel går säker från uttolkandet av just de orden! Det kan liknas vid ett osynligt språk. Waldén har dock titlar på alla sina verk. Enligt honom själv är den gemensamma nämnaren en slags geografisk hemvist. Det är målningar med titlar som The Black Sea, Karta och The Walk. Det ger upphov till funderingar kring orientering och vandringar. Vandringar genom en konsthistoria och genom ordens mening. Connecting the dots Det finns måleri som kräver en förlaga i naturen. Caspar David Friedrich må ha räknat ut en formel för det ultimata romantiska landskapet, men ett landskap måste ha funnits, och setts för att betraktare till fullo kunna tjusas av hans måleri. Waldéns måleri har ingen början i naturen. Det är naturvidrigt om man så vill. Waldén nämner en geografisk tillhörighet som en möjlig ingång till målningarna. Det är ett brett begrepp. En större väggmålning bär namnet Rigor Mortis (extended version), en titel som signalerar en stelnad natur, eller en stelnad kartbild. Det är en målning bestående av ett intrikat rutnät som tycks röra sig åt alla håll samtidigt. Det är ett nät som skulle kunna vara ett mänskligt rörelsemönster (om man envist vill få in ett stycke kropp i ekvationen). Det är dekorativt och mystiskt. Eller: antingen är målningen en förenkling av något, eller ett sätt att komplicera något. Detta något är inte helt tydligt. Tydligt är att Waldéns måleri balanserar mellan dessa poler. Målningarnas titlar tvingar tankegångarna åt vissa riktningar, men i likhet med hans former vindlar dessa ändå vidare på egen hand. Vissa av Waldéns målningar är bara antydningar. Målningen A Blaze in the Northern Sky är måleriskt sett asketisk, men man kan med hjälp av titeln få syn på det som ryms utanför duken. Är det fantasin, eller associationer bortom bildens rent formalistiska kvaliteter? Det är en oerhört snabb rörelse man ser trots bildens inneboende och oundvikliga statiska uttryck.

Den ogästvänliga gesten Vad fångas i förståelsens nät? Waldén ger förslag, men bilderna är visuella gåtor. Det konventionella kartläsandet sätts ur spel. Han målar riktningar och mötande linjer. Vad bildas i detta? Det finns något distinkt och bestämt i Waldéns måleri, men då det även finns så skissartade egenskaper inbäddat i dessa MS Paint-målningar blir det distinkta efter en stunds betraktande lätt grumligt. Målningen The Harbour är skir i sina tunna linjer, men de helt färglagda fälten talar ett annat språk. Något annat händer i dessa monokroma rastplatser. Nu tillåter jag mig själv sväva ut en aning och tänker på målningarna som en slags formel för framtidens måleri som någon kunde ha föreställts sig det 1950. Långt innan människor hade tillgång till ens ett så enkelt program som MS Paint. Det är former som kräver ett specifikt verktyg, och kanske framförallt ett säreget formspråk. Detta formspråk har vi lärt oss känna igen via digitala verktyg. Att måla fram den pixlade formen gör måleriet tidsbundet, men då Waldéns bilder är enkla sett utifrån datorns möjligheter blir det närmast nostalgiskt, trots dess digitala uttryck. Navigationen görs bäst via formens stela poesi. Målningen Inverted Revelation är talande för hela sviten med bilder. Den inverterade uppenbarelsen stämmer väl överens med bildernas dubbla effekt. I bildernas perspektiv anas en tredimensionalitet som gör formen till något byggt, eller till något som skulle kunna uppföras. Denna arkitektoniska form ställs emot de till synes irrationella kartbilderna. Det ser ut som en topografisk orienteringshänvisning. Det kan vara i just det mötet som något uppenbarar sig, det finns något fascinerande inuti formen. Ögat söker en lösning. En slumpmässighet kan skönjas i bildernas former men när dessa kombineras med titlarnas tydlighet händer något. Det är titlar som kan användas i bildläsningen men de är också ord, och meningar som bidrar till en intressant dubbel verfremdungseffekt. Bildernas svårtydda ritningar är i sig till viss del distanserade från möjliga tolkningar och när titlarna ska läsas in i bilden ställs betraktaren inför en spännande och svår navigationsproblematik.

Kan Waldéns arbete kallas anti-metaforiskt? Är dessa ogreppbara former ett försök att undvika en metaforisk tankegång? Svär han sig fri från bildens förmåga att vara ett tecken för något annat när han gör det så svårt för betraktaren att hitta rätt med hjälp av dessa kartor? Det finns en grundläggande frågeställning inbäddad i den abstrakta bilden: är abstraktionen ett sätt att gömma undan en innebörd, eller är det ett sätt att avslöja en innebörd? Ett koncept är framtaget och förverkligat. Serien med bilder har getts samma grundförutsättning i MS Paints begränsning, och möjlighet. Titlarna är dock från olika platser och områden. Det är i denna oheliga allians som formerna tillåts uppgå i något annat. Navigationen får ett fäste. Sara Walker är konstvetare och frilandsskribent

NamnlösB0902, sketch for the wall painting Rigor Mortis (extended version) Following pages: 58: NamnlösB0903, MS Paint image 59: NamnlösB0909 (inverted), MS Paint image 60: Västerås 61: Treignac

All works 2009 Andreas Waldén was born in Sweden Book design by Andreas Waldén and Sam Basu The typeface is Garamond Premier Pro Studio and landscape photo by Andreas Waldén Art work photo by Isaac Muños This book was produced by Treignac Projet and Andreas Waldén with help from Svenska kulturfonden

Copyright Treignac Projet and the authors and artist © 2010 www. andreaswalden.com www.treignacprojet.org No part of this publication may be reprinted or in any way reproduced without the publishers written consent.

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