Martin Jacobson at Varbergs Konsthall, Varberg, Sweden: Solo-exhibition

MARTIN JACOBSON

 

This summer Varbergs konsthall presents the solo exhibition A Dream About Roses and Butterflies by Martin Jacobson.

 

In Martin Jacobson's works, we are drawn into a flow of dreams and mythologies. The images are filled with human figures, animals, architectural forms and nature. The colours are brightly coloured and often exaggerated, creating a sense of unreality. The motifs with their contrasting colours seem both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

 

Jacobson's process usually starts with botanising among older images in the form of advertisements, illustrations, postcards and reproductions of works of art. They are often from the mid-19th century onwards, the time of the infancy of popular culture. He searches for archetypal motifs and themes that seem to him charged with collective memories and associations. The images are put together into collages that then become models for his paintings.

 

A fragmentary and surreal pictorial world emerges, recognisable and familiar but just as often unknown, dark and suggestive. Romantic images are mixed with uncanny and theatrical ones. Often a scene unfolds where we as viewers are either drawn into what is going on, or left outside. The images evoke something that is, or is not, just within reach. Like the feeling of dreaming.