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ERIK JEOR

Quark

20 August – 20 September 2009

Opening on the 20 of August between 5pm and 8pm

 

 

Angelika Knäpper Gallery presents the second separate exhibition with works of Erik Jeor. Since the success of his first show, in 2007 he has exhibited in various places, such as Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm and at the La Viola Bank Gallery in New York. His work is represented in the collections of the Moderna museet in Stockholm, Malmö Konstmuseum in Malmö and at Sundsvalls kommun, the city of Sundsvall.

In connection to the exhibition Angelika Knäpper Gallery has produced a catalogue, featuring all the works in this show as well as a text by Olle Granath. Please find an excerpt below.     

  

 

 

                     VHS Dream, 150x210 cm, watercolour, 2009

 

 

 

SOMETHING ABOUT BEING QUARK

 

Text: Olle Granath 

Translation: Hans Olsson

 

 

“There are only two ways to paint – for me, at any rate – that do not adhere to

a school programme. One way is to paint by inspiration – while the paint is

wet and the mood hot, while the first enthusiasm still makes the blood boil and

compels the brush as a force of nature. The other way is to paint with a fervent,

long-suffering love’s untiring, never-failing and never-ending tenderness and

care; redo and redo again, love yourself into every corner of your motif, into

every wrinkle of a face, into every leaf of a tree. – A painting of the first kind is

usually finished in its own way. – Those of the latter kind are never finished.”

 

Ernst Josephson

 

 

When I first visit Erik Jeor’s studio he refers to a statement by Ernst Josephson, which

he has discovered in a catalogue produced by Liljevalchs konsthall in conjunction with a

1950s retrospective exhibition of Josephson’s work. At the time, Erik Jeor was not born,

but the statement has remained important for him. To create uncertainness round the

work, both in terms of time and space, is characteristic of Jeor’s art. My first impression 

of his previous exhibition at Angelika Knäpper Gallery was that this was an artist 

enamoured with ancient Chinese ink painting with landscape as subject matter. However,

closer inspection revealed that this was painting with a completely different aim. The 

landscapes were perhaps chimeras conjured up in the mind of the viewer, who, in the 

effusive watercolours, was witnessing a struggle between free flowing and solid, sometimes

crystalline structures.

 

Our conversation about the images quickly moved on from ancient Chinese painting 

to Öyvind Fahlström and his 1950s paintings – works such as Dr. Livingstone and

Ade-Ledic-Nander, whose swarming shapes eluded unequivocal definition just as they do

in Erik Jeor’s paintings, regardless of other differences. In the latter’s painting, the world

of signs is not allowed to dominate as it does in Fahlström. Suddenly, unruly nebulae of

pigment and water sweep over the large sheets of paper and the disciplined drawing has to

defend its place in a world of images in which the struggle between light and dark appears

to be the essential thing.

 

If we return to the quotation from Josephson, it seems as if Erik Jeor wishes to 

combine the two kinds of painting in one image, to integrate that which is finished “in 

its own way” with that which is never finished. He creates paradoxes, which could be

described – in words other than those of painting – as if he refuses to choose between the

journey and the destination, between the question and the answer. He lets both of them

struggle for space in his images with the result that they never stop or freeze for a moment.

Concepts such as mutability and evanescence are convincingly depicted.

 

This is probably the background to the exhibition title, Quark. According to the 

encyclopaedia, quarks are some of the smallest building blocks of matter. They are smaller

than electrons. There are several kinds of quarks, all designated by a colour. What they

have in common is that they cannot exist in isolation. In fact, in order to exist at all, they

have to be coupled with something that is their opposite. On this level of matter, there is a

constant being and non-being. What a challenge for an artist who sees his forms emerge,

get erased and change shape both within and outside of his control. Water, his solvent,

which is allowed to flow freely across the sheets, transforms them into billowing reliefs, a

specific topography underneath the painted topography. The landscape metaphor makes

itself known again, even though we are removing ourselves from the fog of the Chinese

mountains and approach Henri Michaux’s hallucinations.

 

 

 

 

 

Press

SvD

Omkonst

Konsten.net

 

 

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