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Ali Maher, Director of Darat
Al Funun, traveled two years ago to Sweden to visit the Svenska
Institute and the Modern Museum of Stockholm in order to prepare
for this exchange of exhibitions between Sweden and Jordan.
This exchange is part of the Modern Museum International Program
that covers many countries. It is interesting to hear the
reaction of Ali Maher to this trip. "I was deeply impressed
by the professionalism that the Svenska Institute and the
Modern Art Museum displayed in preparing such a rich and meticulous
schedule for me. I was particularly impressed by the gracious
modesty exhibited by artist of such high caliber, a quality
that eased the way for a free and constructive dialogue," Accompanying the artists
to Amman were David Elliott, Director of the Modern Museum
of Fine Arts in Stockholm, Svenrobert Lundquist, Director
of the Kunsthalle in Gothenburg and Professor Tom Sandqvist,
art critic. Although intrinsically different, the two artists
have a lot in common. Both are purists, who put abstract forms
into a large empty space that many artists In the Middle East
would have filled, if for no other reason than the "horror
vacui" or fear of empty space that has been handed down to
them from both their Byzantine and Muslim forefathers. It
is a breath of fresh air to see pure clean open space for
a change and to see crisp shapes, modest and subtle yet carrying
a lot of hidden meaning. The first artist, Ann Edholm,
is professor of painting at the University College of Fine
Arts in Stockholm. Her graphic works combine black and white
geometric motifs that stand in great stillness within a clear
format. "I wanted to deal with pure abstraction, then I questioned
it. "she explained, "It dealt with lots of negatives like
A work of art should have no psychology, no narrative, etc.
"But in my work, one might see a black rectangle on a big
white canvas as a shape in space, or as a door. I leave it
completely up to the viewer." Ann mentioned that she was
working on Matthias Grunewald's altarpiece from the German
Renaissance. "I saw in it a human sacrifice, "she said "a
big story, part history, part fairy tail. It played a role
in our upbringing and had an effect on us. Now you can see
its influence on my work. Fourteen stations of the cross,
and fourteen conceptions." Ann wanted to convey much
in her works but couldn't, as she is an avid defendant of
abstraction. "In the past I did a lot of physical drawings,
but hid them behind a layer of paint, a skin. Now I work to
get rid of a lot of nos." As critic Helena Mattsson put it,
Ann Edholm's work "is a constructivism with its roots in the
tradition of art history. It is unified with a contemporary
graphic symbol taken directly from popular culture." Ann's work is a number of
'iconography' prints, dealing mostly with primary shapes such
as black circles and rectangles hanging in space, immobilized,
always reminding one of potential movement. Red appears at
rare instances, making a personal statement among the pulsating
rhythms of black shapes standing side by side as if in a row.
Are they houses? One might ask. One day, in order to draw
a circle, Ann carried a thread with a ball. She was tantalized
by the pendulum effect, and painted it. A horizontal line on top drops
vertical lines downwards. These carry two black balls that
touch the lower edge of the paper. This touching, as Mondrian
and Kandinsky stressed, gives them a sense of stability, whereas
the upper line does not touch the edges and so is floating
in space. A fragile balance is created. The viewer, seeing
the two hanging circles, has the impression that if they are
let loose, they would hit each other and clash. Is that not
telling about life? The other artist Hakan (pronounced
Hokan) Rehnberg, starts with a translucent acrylic sheet instead
of a canvas, opening up flat space to new freedom and dimension
even before receiving his stamp. The artist, now master of
this space, is sensitive to the fact that it exists, that
it has its own dimension; he allows the forms that he paints
on to float, covering only portions of it and allowing it
to be ever present in his composition. It is a question of
'to be or not to be' of shapes and space. What he tries to
reflect here is a state of consciousness, the actual physical
'act' of seeing. He raises his paintings to slightly above
eye-level to enable the eye to interact directly with it.
Hakan does not attempt to
mix into his color scheme any shades or tones, but sweeps
flat layers of color on the acrylic surface. the sheet being
smooth, allows every accidental to appear clearly, the rippling,
hit and miss effects, or palette knife sweeps, Hakan uses
them all. In one of his works, a brown block rendered in a
hit and miss effect stands imposingly on the upper part of
a translucent space. Thick patches within this block lead
you into a new world sprinkled with dots allowing you to enter
into the depths. Below the block, in the remaining
space, a dense, intense yellow block stands alienated on the
edge of the acrylic format. Seeming threatened by the angular
projection of the brown shape, it used its intensity to come
forward, as if to flee from the threat. It is this dialogue
of shapes that Hakan Rehnberg stresses in his work. Hakan
reaches to the extremity of his concept when he covers a yellow
rectangle with an aluminum sheet, a process he calls inversion.
He studies the effect of this blockage on the eye of the beholder.
One seems to look at one side,
picking up the yellow edges and naturally seeking the continuation
of the yellow on the other side. Hakan sees this process of
turning the eye around the work as behaving as if it is a
sculpture in the round. It is this philosophy of seeing that
is at the base of his concept. Hakan is an astute reader of
Greek literature and philosophy. Holes in the sheet metal allow
the viewer to peek in. The space between the two sheets allows
just enough light to come in to let the yellow hue reappear
with soft shadows and a slight interaction between the blueness
of the metal and the yellow of the base; sensitivity in miniature
form. Older works deal with the
same problem in a more aggressive way. Three yellow paintings
(from a series of five) are called 'herodiates' after a poem
by Stephane Malarme stand side by side, raised above eye level.
The theme of Herodias, wife of king Herod; requesting the
head of John the Baptist is here enacted by the ability of
paint to admit the eye or repel it, and by twirling it into
a whirlwind where one loses his head! In the first one, The paint,
applied crudely with a palette knife, swells up into forbidding
violent hatching (crisscross effect) reminiscent of a prison.
Only the edges of the black surface underneath appear. According
to Hakan "to paint is to establish a surface that is spread
out, where material is transformed into a work of art. I always
stop when I say to myself now there is a surface, there is
a presence in the work." The next rectangle has a dense flat
front that is totally forbidding. sending the eye off like
a ping pong ball. The third offers an exotic
atmospheric space rendered with a tumultuous combination of
brushstrokes, eerily reminiscent of the works of French artist
Gustave Moreau. The viewer is slowly led up to a circular
area where a whirlwind of color spirals into the depth of
oblivion, leading him on to lose his head, remember Herodias!
The work is iconography, if only in composition, for the circle
lies just above center as in the coda of the Middle Ages.
Hakan's latest work, know
exhibited in a museum in South Sweden, is a monumental 'box
made of aluminum, glass and steel sheets, called The Sealed
Studio. It is 3 meters high, not large enough to be architecture,
but too large to be a sculpture. It explains his theory of
admission and omission of vision clearly. A glass sheet stops
the person from entering the form while his eye has access
to the interior. It is an analogy of the body and soul. The
space left open below casts shadows creating a new reality.
Hakan again dives into the realm of spirituality. You can
hear the artists talk about their work today, Thursday, at
7:00 p.m at the Darat. |
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March,
25-26, 1998 
Darat
Al Funun has opened wide its doors to welcome two Swedish
artists, Hakan Rehnberg and Ann Edholm, great supporters of
abstraction. Both artists fight to reach an absolute state
of abstraction, one using a private vocabulary of forms, the
other studying the physical reaction of the eye as it faces
the work of art; yet both reach out to life experience which
finally adds some Lyricism to their work. 
