Tomas Lundgren

Tomas Lundgren is a Swedish artist from Gothenborg, famous for his sensitively executed grisaille painting, which are often based on photographic models from the interwar period.

Lundgren was educated at the Valand School of Art in Gothenburg, where he graduated in 2013. He has received several scholarships, including the Fredrik Roos scholarship in 2014, Becker's Artist Scholarship in 2016 and the Artists' Association. Lundgren has participated in several solo and group exhibitions, among others at Röda Sten Art Hall, Moderna Museet in Malmö and Dalslands Art Museum. He is represented in private and public collections, including the SEB collection, the Ståhl Collection, the Gothenburg Museum of Art, the Moderna Museet and the Statens Konstråd.

Lundgren finds his subjects in archives, literature and history books. He has a persistent curiosity about past moments and how they intrude into today's social climate. The girl, Fränzi Fehrmann, was a model for the German expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, whose work was shown in the infamous exhibition Entartete Kunst, where the Nazi regime displayed art they considered "degenerate". The pilot Blacker was the first to fly over Mount Everest. Art forger Han Van Meegeren, whose hands mix paint on a palette, made his living as an art forger. He became famous for having sold a "Vermeer" to Hermann Göring. The female demon Ammit from Egyptian mythology was photographed by Harry Burton when Tutankhamun's tomb was opened in the 1920s.

The photographic prints show a colorful historical time full of contradictions, experimentation and voyages of discovery, a time when traditions were challenged and new ones formed, a time of brutality and unimaginable cruelty. The grid system that Lundgren uses divides the painting into several fields. He has painted one square at a time, with the other parts masked. There can be months between each box, hence the small shifts in each painting. The old photographs that have become paintings relate to the question of how we relate to the past. When we remember, something in the past is actualized. At the same time, there is always something incomplete in this recreation. In every memory there is a displacement, a certain type of distortion, which constitutes the uncertainty in the image. In the same way as Van Meegeren, Lundgren manipulates history in one way or another. What remains is the gap, a gap between us and history that can never be completely bridged.

The work Le Temps Retrouvé consists of hand-copied pages from the draft of Marcel Proust's In Search of the Time That Fled, written 1909-1922. As in Proust's novel suite, Lundgren's drawings include a search for understanding a historical time that no longer exists. The slow recreation of the historical images becomes an aspiration, an attempt or a gesture, which never quite arrives. What is revealed instead is a gap containing the part of the past (or the understanding of it) that can never be fully accessed. The part that forever remains in the past or in the hidden. Just as the novel suite begins with childhood memories being awakened by the taste of a madeleine cake, Lundgren's paintings point to a kind of search that comes from the corporeal. An exploration that is embodied in the hand, as an embodied gesture that forever searches and that partially - but never completely - finds.

A recurring theme in Tomas Lundgren's self-critical relationship with his artworks is that the gaze is drawn to the execution itself and how it is always bordering on something else, shaped and reshaped in relation to other media and techniques. A meta-reflection on the potential of the painterly image and its history emerges, a kind of media archeology with a strong melancholic touch, in which the image presented is a kind of phantasm. But here is also the doubter's belief, a search for the image's ability to convey memories and moods. It can be a phantasm, but beyond the structure and repetition, there is a sense of conviction in Tomas Lundgren's art. A glimmer of hope.

Download Artist's CV

Born 1985, lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Education

2011-13 MFA, Valand Academy, Gothenburg
2007-10 BFA, Malmö Art Academy, Malmö
2005-07 Dômen Konstskola, Gothenburg

Solo Exhibitions

2023 Historiens öga, Ebelingmuseet, Torshälla
2023 Disappearing Act, Galleri Cora Hillebrand, Gothenburg
2023 Bilderatlas, Galerie Leu, Munich
2022 Europa, Galleri Thomas Wallner, Simris
2021 Nachleben, Passagen Linköpings Konsthall
2021 Some Shade, Some Double, Some Phantom, 3:e våningen, Gothenburg
2020 Mimesis, Galleri Arnstedt, Östra Karup
2019 To be Echoing, Galleri Cora Hillebrand, Gothenburg
2018 Forever Someone Else, CFHILL, Stockholm
2018 The Rendering of Distance, Galleri Thomas Wallner, Simris
2017 Tomas Lundgren, Dalslands Konstmuseum, Upperud
2017 Schaefer Expedition, Röda Sten Konsthall Lounge, Gothenburg
2017 Schaefer Expedition, Landvetter Airport, Gothenburg
2017 Reenact, CFHILL, Stockholm
2016 Ellipsis, duo exhibition with Ylva Carlgren, Galleri Box, Gothenburg
2016 Beckers Art Award 2016, Färgfabriken, Stockholm
2015 Appearance through Absence, Galleri Thomas Wallner, Simris
2014 As Another, Galleri Mors Mössa, Gothenburg
2014 Fredrik Roos Stipendium 2014, Moderna Museet, Malmö
2013 The Invisible, Gallery Monitor, Gothenburg
2009 Portrait, Galleri Magnus Åklundh W.I.P., Malmö

Group Exhibitions

2023 Petit Salon, Curated by Ebba de Faire, Stockholm
2023 Chart Art Fair, Copenhagen
2021 Med nya ögon, Göteborgs Konsthall
2021 Close Up, CFHILL, Stockholm
2021 Chart Art Fair, Copenhagen
2020 Art Attack, Bohusläns Museum, Uddevalla
2020 Polyfoni 5, Galleri Thomas Wallner, Simris
2020 Den tänkande handen, Kungliga slottet, Stockholm
2019 Realism, Galleri Thomas Wallner, Simris
2019 Art Fair Suomi, Helsinki
2017 Någon sorts kunskap, Göteborgs Konstmuseum
2017 Polyfoni 4, Galleri Thomas Wallner, Simris
2017 Beckers Konstnärsstipendium 30 år, Färgfabriken, Stockholm
2016 Valand Revisited, Strandverket Konsthall, Marstrand
2016 Origo, Krognoshuset, Lund
2016 Painting Failures, Moderna Museet, Malmö
2015 Polyfoni 3, Galleri Thomas Wallner, Simris
2014 40th Anniversary Jubilee, Galleri Thomas Wallner, Simris
2014 Samlarens Blick, Bohusläns Museum, Uddevalla
2014 Polyfoni 2, Galleri Thomas Wallner, Simris
2013 Frames & Stages, Göteborgs Konsthall
2013 24 Spaces – A Cacophony, Malmö Konsthall
2013 Galleri Thomassen, Gothenburg
2012 An Act in the Commons, Strömstad
2012 Field Office, Repositioned Gallery, Glasgow
2012 Painting for Real, Östergötlands Museum, Linköping
2011 57°38’10”N 11°46’40”, Brännö, Gothenburg
2011 New Scene, Bohusläns Museum, Uddevalla
2010 Year Exhibition, Malmö Art Academy, Malmö
2010 Bachelor Show, KHM Gallery, Malmö
2010 Malmö Goes Oslo, One Night Only, Oslo
2009 We were Born with a Tremendous Longing, Galleri Pictura, Lund
2009 Year Exhibition, Malmö Art Academy, Malmö

Represented

Chalmers University of Technology
Göteborgs Konstmuseum
Lindéngruppen
Malmö Konstmuseum
Moderna Museet
Region Skåne
Statens Konstråd
Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening

Grants

2023 Thordénstiftelsens kulturstipendium
2022 One year working grant, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee
2020 Adlerbertska Kulturstipendiet
2020 Den tänkande handen, Konstakademien
2020 Längmanska kulturfonden
2018 Two year working grant, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee
2018 Göteborgs stads kulturstipendium
2016 Beckers Art Award 2016
2015 One year working grant, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee
2014 Fredrik Roos Art Grant 2014
2013 Stiftelsen Eric Ericsson
2013 Eva och Hugo Bergmans minnesfond
2012 Otto och Charlotte Mannheimers fond
2008 Max Albin Dahlgrens stipendiefond
2007 Uddevalla Kulturstipendium
2007 Theodor och Hanne Mannheimers fond

Repetition and Phantasm

by Håkan Nilsson

Painting and photography share a unique relationship, with their roles and positions having shifted as perceptions of both media have evolved. The famous statement by French painter Paul Delaroche in 1839—that painting would be dead with the advent of photography—has become a symbol of how we understand the identity of modern painting. The burgeoning modern era, which just a few decades earlier had freed painting from its duty to serve the nobility and the church with representational images, soon sacrificed painting on the altar of technological progress. Yet, as we know, painting would soon rise again, following the logic of becoming a self-contained medium in the spirit of l’art pour l’art.

The notion of photography as the bane of (representational) painting is an essential metaphor that explains not only modern painting but also the entire development of modern art and its claim to autonomy. However, this metaphor is also a significant oversimplification, missing nearly all the nuances of the complex dialectic that continues to define the relationship between painting and photography. It is not about mutual annihilation but rather a symbiotic competition, where parasitism is reciprocal. Perhaps this relationship can be seen as a variation of Stockholm Syndrome. Who is the hostage and who is the captor keeps changing, but the relationship always develops within a framework of mutual dependence.

We see this dynamic in various experiments with photography and photograms, where abstract images are appreciated for their painterly qualities. We also see it in photorealistic painting—a term inherently unstable. Do we mean a painting so realistic that it could be a photograph? Or do we mean a painting that looks exactly like a photograph and thus does not correspond to reality at all?

An essential part of Tomas Lundgren’s artistic practice draws its energy from these complex interconnections. He belongs to a category of painters driven by a kind of self-criticism that develops into an awareness of the history of painting, its position today (and in the past), and its relevance. One could even say that for Tomas Lundgren, painting is largely synonymous with its possible position(s). To paint is to explore the (im)possible existence of painting. Painting is, in a sense, both purpose and means.

Nevertheless, Tomas Lundgren’s practice is far from the notion of painting as having a sovereignty that could be understood as medium-specific. Here, the boundary, for instance, with photography becomes especially significant. In Lundgren’s artistic investigations, painting and photography intersect, overlapping in their shared relationship with the image. The photographic image is always a historical document, a result of something that once was—whether in the immediate past or long ago. The painted image, by contrast, is less immediate and evolves over time. It is always also an image of its own process and creation.

When Tomas Lundgren paints from photographs, he is drawn to images where the passage of time is unmistakable. The environments, clothing, and hairstyles of the people he paints clearly show that they belong to history. This sense of historical distance is further emphasized by the fact that his paintings are executed in grayscale, reminiscent of black-and-white photography. This historical distance is crucial because it makes the viewer aware that Lundgren has no direct personal connection to the subject.

With this distance comes a shift in the image: we do not look at a person but at an image of a person. The people become examples of a time that, for most of us, is a generation removed. The closeness of photography has turned into distance. Its recognition has become forgetfulness. Tomas Lundgren’s large-scale paintings remind us of the anonymity of forgetting, a fate imposed on all of us over time. At the same time, the meticulous painting process allows Lundgren to get closer to the image, building it stroke by stroke.

In the latest additions to his series of paintings based on photographs, Tomas Lundgren has introduced another grid. He divides the original image into a grid system and then builds the painting square by square. But the grid is not meant to create a system that facilitates image creation. Quite the opposite: Lundgren paints each square individually. And because he works with oil, he must paint the squares in a sequence so that the new ones do not border squares where the paint has not yet dried. The result is an image that emerges through fragments.

Here, another aspect of the painted image reveals itself: its procedural depiction is imprecise. Each box follows its own logic. No matter how hard Tomas Lundgren tries to bring the individual squares close to the original, they inevitably look different. The attempt at control exposes the traces of the hand, and the anonymous image becomes a sequence of individual elements. The immediacy of the photographic image disintegrates into a series of disparate present moments. The historical image of the pilot in Blacker, for instance, becomes, in Lundgren’s monumental painting, a multiplicity of temporal dimensions, where the linear historical breaks against the sequential and the circular. Perhaps we can say that the image emerges from its forgetfulness to haunt us, reminding us through the immediacy of painting of the “then” of photography.

At the same time, the grid system speaks to conventions of both painted and photographic images. The photographic image is created through a round lens but always produces square or rectangular images. The rectangular form was also synonymous with modernist abstraction, the form that literally framed non-representational painting. It is also typical of modernity’s desire to organize and understand the world through supposedly objective systems. By adopting this basic form, Tomas Lundgren’s paintings make these conventions part of his visual vocabulary.

In a series of paintings depicting color charts, Tomas Lundgren ties into the convention of organization. The tonal shifts in the colors are not about different mixtures gradually making a color lighter or darker. These paintings are based on an older color system intended to establish a universal system for representing various phenomena in nature. Thus, it is less about how something actually looks and more about how a particular object, a fruit, or perhaps a flower, is meant to appear when depicted. This color system would help artists and illustrators depict reality more accurately, albeit at the expense of its actual appearance.

The precise appears in various forms in Tomas Lundgren’s work. Whether it involves attempts at representation or memory (or both), it is always just out of reach. Precision is like a kind of phantom, an illusion so vivid that it is perceived as possible. When Lundgren works from photographs, color charts, or notes, two types of phantoms emerge. On the one hand, there is the phantom in the subject itself: the desperate capturing of the just-past moment in a photo; the attempt to systematize and convey the natural with the color chart; the desire to make something present with a note. On the other hand, there is the phantom arising from the artist’s act of painting: his relationship to the imprecision of memory, his relentless loss of details and nuances, and his shifts through repetition.

When Tomas Lundgren draws our attention to conventions, he acts like a magician revealing the chimera. The grid pattern becomes a way to expose the construction of the painting, as if explaining the tricks. The painting Van Meegeren, whose title references one of the most famous forgers in Dutch art, plays with this side of craftsmanship. After World War II, Hans van Meegeren had to paint in court to prove that the Vermeer paintings he sold to the German occupiers were actually his own. Van Meegeren reminds us that painting is always proximity and distance simultaneously.

When Tomas Lundgren paints from parts of Marcel Proust’s notes for In Search of Lost Time, he temporarily suspends the distance between himself and the time that has passed since Proust’s masterpiece. Presence becomes the credo of the painterly act. Yet there is something in this process that amplifies the sense of hopelessness in any project of memory. In Lundgren’s black-and-white drawings of Proust’s notes, the shades of pencil and ink found in the originals disappear. Although meticulously executed, the drawings become coarse through their stark contrasts.

They also reverse the logic found in the quick gestures of the notes, where the most complex sections to copy are likely those executed most rapidly: a quick stroke indicating a paragraph shift, a swift crossing out of text, or spontaneous annotations. Instead, Lundgren’s focus shifts to something else, such as the strange fact that this homage to memory relies on recurring editing and repetition. In Lundgren’s drawings, memory is neither spontaneous nor immediate but a function of a well-developed methodology and direction.

A recurring theme in Tomas Lundgren’s self-critical relationship to his artwork is that attention is drawn to the act of execution itself and how it always borders on something else, shaped and reshaped in relation to other media and techniques. A meta-reflection on the potential of the painted image and its history emerges—a kind of media archaeology with a deeply melancholic undertone, where the depicted image becomes a kind of phantom. Yet here, too, lies the skeptic’s belief, a search for the image’s ability to convey memories and emotions. It may indeed be a phantom, but beyond the structure and repetition, there is also a sense of conviction in Tomas Lundgren’s art—a glimmer of hope. (© Håkan Nilsson, 2023.)