Per Wizén – Subterranean

Cecilia Hillström Gallery is pleased to present Per Wizén's first solo exhibition at the gallery, Subterranean. Wizén creates intriguing paper collages using fragments of reproductions of historical art works, where the new works still have an aesthetic kinship with the originals. The content of the work shifts in relation to the source, pinpointing hidden meanings and underlying tensions.

In his series Subterranean, Wizén's starting point has been Lewis Carroll's books about Alice; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Using the reproductions of John Tenniel's original drawings for the books from 1865 and 1871, Wizén opens up an entirely new interpretation of the relationship between Alice and the White Knight and emphasizes the uncanny qualities in Carroll's texts. Apart from focusing on the characters, Wizén creates new settings not found in Tenniel's flat illustrations which generally lack the contrast of light and shadow. By using tiny details, sometimes repeated up to a thousand times, Wizén compiles convincing scenes where the vibrating rhythm of Tenniel's drawings is present.

After exhibiting some of the works-in-progress over the past years, Wizén presents for the first time the completed works of the first part of the series; Horse Around and Smoke and Mirrors. This time, the meticulously made collages have been transferred to photogravures, echoing the technique in the original drawings by Tenniel. Capturing the uncanny aspects of the tales of Alice and her adventures, Per Wizén focuses on the unreadable rather than the explicit story of the children's book.