Per Wizén – Undercurrents

Cecilia Hillström Gallery is pleased to present our third solo exhibition with Per Wizén (b. 1966), featuring new works recently presented at Moderna Museet Malmö in a solo show curated by Iris Müller-Westermann.

Per Wizén works with paper collages built from art historical images deeply embedded in our culture. Thousands of details are literally cut out and constructed into a new whole, making up works closely related to the original image. The new large-scale works presented in the exhibition are based on paper collages made up of scenes from Disneyland magazines about Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan from the 70s. Wizén takes hold of these familiar visual stories, where normal boundaries and structures are dissolved, and presents a continuation of the land of fantasy filled with both possibilities and threats.

In earlier works centred around the story of Alice in Wonderland, Wizén focused on Alice and her relationship with the other characters. In the new series of works, the characters are completely absent from the scenery. In the work The Lost Boys, a familiar yet estranged bedroom appears void of its inhabitants. The smaller and larger tents in the room show evidence of play. Only the open window with the curtain blowing in the wind reveals that a more serious event might have taken place, pointing to the prospect of adventure but also of loss or rebellion. The title The Lost Boys referring to the characters living in Neverland in the Peter Pan story can also allude to more ominous contemporary references.

In Wizén’s meticulous and time-consuming practice, the subtle yet essential shift in the original expression is important. The mesmerising vast and empty forest in Blue Hunt holds a quality of something unknown and also uncanny – a recurring theme in Wizén‘s work. The fish-eye perspective of that of a surveillance camera gives away that there is something more to the motive. Wizén opens up the image with the at first sight innocent surface to the contemporary and addresses issues of a much more complex nature. By using the visual mechanisms and DNA of the original stories, Wizén brings forth hidden meanings and underlying tensions in his fantastical works.