![]() ![]() Many of the retro futuristic machines lie broken and in ruin, dotting the landscape, interrupting the natural flow of the hills and valleys and the flow of sunlight itself. Looking at Stålenhag’s work, I am confronted by the beauty of nature and at the same time the imposition, the interruption of nature, by technology. How often do we pay attention to the sun setting or rising, or the colour of the light as it hits the skyscrapers as we walk down a busy city street? How often do we look down at our feet, rather than setting our shoulders back and looking up at the world? And that is what Stålenhag is trying to do, expand how we see the world around us.Įmerson once wrote that it is very difficult to see what is right in front of us. It hints at something beyond our vision and beyond our realm of comprehension. It is the eerie light of the early morning or the final flare of sun in the late afternoon, just before the darkness creeps in. No matter the time of day, his paintings always feel like twilight. Usually, this is exaggerated further by mist and shadow. In each work, the landscape is bathed in a pastel pink, orange or blue, which blends into the surroundings. What initially drew me to Stålenhag’s artworks was his use of light. Always present on the horizon were the collosal cooling towers of the Bona reactor, with their green obstacle lights. The landscape was full of machines and scrap metal connected to the facility in one way or the other. The everyday images of a father and a son, a group of friends, or a man carrying his shopping home are offset against the looming vision of futuristic machinery, creating a strange contrast. The book is set in the 1950s and yet the technologies are from another era entirely. Whatever forces reigned deep below sent vibrations up through the bedrock, the flint lime bricks, and the Eternit facades, and into our living rooms. Strange machines roamed the woods, the glades, and the meadows. ![]() Riksenergi’s service vehicles patrolled the roads and the skies. Tales from the Loop begins with an explanation of the Loop, a fictional experimental particle accelerator built deep within the Swedish underground, producing all sorts of spin off technology. Reading the book, I wanted to understand the world according to Simon Stålenhag. In doing so, I was trying to understand what made me stop and stare at that painting so many years ago. I read the book and watched the Amazon series of the same name. It was a fictional story of a ruined world and simultaneously an allegory for our times. The artist had produced a whole book on the topic, with a backstory of a retro-futuristic Sweden. ![]() The father and son looked like they were from the past.Ī week ago, I stumbled upon the same painting in a local bookstore. The mechanical structure looked like it was from the future. A father and son were out walking together and in the distance, a giant mechanical structure lay in ruin. The painting showed a remote landscape in the Swedish countryside. A few years ago, I came across a painting by the artist Simon Stålenhag. ![]()
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