Stieg Pers­son
The Fall

Stieg Persson’s paint­ings are an intri­cate puz­zle of sug­ges­tions and con­tra­dic­tions, belief and dis­sent, hope and dis­ap­proval. They defy sum­ma­riza­tion, not to be clever, but because things are com­pli­cat­ed. He com­bines the dis­parate ele­ments of expe­ri­ence and turns them into some­thing irre­sistibly beau­ti­ful. Objec­tive­ly his work func­tions as an inves­ti­ga­tion of his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy and the­o­ry, and yet is over­whelm­ing­ly inti­mate. It is a fine bal­ance of the Renais­sance and David Lynch, of Death Met­al and Mil­ton; it is puri­ty and it is per­ver­sion. Fus­ing abstrac­tion with a col­lec­tion of flot­sam and jet­sam, rub­bish is ren­dered in exquis­ite hyper-real detail, and placed with­in that great bas­tion of Mod­ernism, the black square, these bits of for­got­ten lit­ter cre­ate a con­tin­u­ous dia­logue between con­flict­ing philoso­phies. The mean­ing of Persson’s work and the man­ner and mate­ri­als with which it has been made are inex­tri­ca­bly linked; each ele­ment sup­ports and com­ple­ments the oth­ers, skil­ful­ly gen­er­at­ing an over­all tum­bling har­mo­ny of meaning.

Lau­ren Ellis, Feb­ru­ary 2004