Per Wizén – Still Life

We are pleased to present a new series of works by Per Wizén, Still Life. Working with paper collages, Wizén creates images from historical art material transferred into photography. Piece by piece the work grows into a new whole, bringing forth underlying tensions and hidden meanings in the original work. The exhibition follows Wizén’s important series, Reworkings, from 1998, based on the work by Caravaggio. Where the first series focused on the underlying erotic themes and power hierarchies in Caravaggio’s original paintings, Still Life focuses on a more personal narrative – the experience of loss.

In Still Life, Wizén works like a painter with his paper fragments, finding the exact nuances and hues of skin that make up the whole. Working with creating a heightened tension is a signature for the artist, which results in intense and sensitive works. In the new series, the paper edges are bare in the final photographic print, enhancing the painterly aspect of the works as well as the fragility of the motifs.

In Reworkings, the works convey themes of lust and repressed violence, resulting in a dramatic convincing whole. The new series holds a more tender quality. Caravaggio’s Narcissus is in Wizén’s version turned into a boy leaning over a thread of pearls in Pearl Necklace I. His mouth is barely open, caressing the pearls with his eyes. Is he looking at himself, desiring or reminiscing, as he stops in mid-movement? Pearls can have many connotations – of intimacy and pleasure, of something precious and dear, or work as a metaphor for tears trickling down over someone’s face, as an endless string of pearls. In Pearl Necklace II, the scull made up of pearls echos memento mori, reminding us of what has passed and unquestionably will come. As we face the scull, we also face the past, recalling loss and sorrow, but also love and connection.

Per Wizén (b. 1966) holds an MFA from Malmö Art Academy. Solo shows include Moderna Museet Malmö and Cecilia Hillström Gallery in 2022, CHART Art Fair, Copenhagen, in 2019, Skissernas Museum – Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, Lund in 2014, and Malmö Art Museum in 2008.

Wizén’s work has also been featured in the touring exhibition Diversity United – Contemporary European Art in Berlin and Moscow, Liljevalchs, Stockholm, Amos Rex, Helsinki, Borås Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, National Museum of Art, Stockholm, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Eskilstuna Art Museum, Turku Art Museum, Åbo, and at Centre Culturel Suédois, Paris, to name a few.

He is represented in the collections of Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, Moderna Museet, Malmö Art Museum, Borås Art Museum, Public Art Agency Sweden, Region Dalarna and Stockholm konst.