Martin Wickström Swedish, b. 1957

Martin Wickström combines landscape, cityscape, figuration and ready-made into a unique montage of paintings of cinematic proportion and enigmatic presence. Composed into scenes and moods with palpable depth, Wickström's scrapbook-like composition intertwines both collective memory and introspective biography, reminiscent of our uncertain past and nostalgic for histories that never were. It is through the artist's line of sight that new, lingering meaning is given - that, or none at all. Everything is skillfully combined in a balancing act between pop art and Swedish melancholy. Something seductive emerges from Wickström's process: in the colouring, highlights and brushwork. At times the shimmering sediment of the enchanting painting is shattered by sawed off and white-painted shapes, brutally screwed to the surface of the painting - a silhouette of a residential complex or a simple office chair. The sign occupies the foreground, though its information is greatly reduced. Meanwhile, these components demand to be anchored in a room other than the one depicted. The perspective shifts from signs to motifs, from mass culture to melancholy.

Like documentary vignettes the paintings converse as puzzle pieces within a greater whole - each a meditation on our metaphysical quests. To be sure, Wickström's pseudo-narrative experiments with this lack of overt meaning, even insertion of meaning - like an empty vessel to be filled, or a vehicle for broader truths in this fast-changing world of ours.