Drawing/Print
Bronze Pieces
drawing in progress: frottage of rock carvings at a site close to Järrestad, Sweden

Bronze Pieces  (2016/17)

6 Frottages on paper, each 1000 x 140cm, 3 Frottages on paper each 400 x 100cm (charcoal), 6 bronze casts. (edition of 2)

For several years I have been visiting the rock carvings near by Järrestad, in the south of Sweden. The carvings date from the late Stone Age and the Bronze Age. They depict animals, ships, footprints and humans. I wonder what do the motifs actually mean, why are they put exactly at this location, who has made them and what for? Are they language in fact? Do they record experience or discovery? Do they give instructions for some ritual? The theories, which exist, can’t be verified.
I copied these traces using frottage. Learning by copying – like learning a word via repetition. I’m surprised about my visual results: beside the historical pictograms I can discover geological stone structures, glacier traces from the ice ages and marks of erosion (due to the wind always blowing from one direction) on the paper; I also recognize my tired and impatient hand, the uneven charcoal and stuff like grass, leaves, cherry stones ...

The six bronze casts are based on drawings I made of individual parts of my disused computer. They refer to my ealier project "Models", which consists of about 70 objects in burned clay. For this work I swapped a bottle of red wine for a 9-year-old computer. Then I took the hard drive apart and carefully studied each component in a very physical sense. I solely focused on the form of each part – not their function – first by making a “Model drawing”, then by remodeling it in rough clay, much enlarged.

The absurdity of trying to decode the function of electronic components through a study of their shape resembles the efforts of archaeologists trying to decipher the workings of a forgotten culture through its artifacts. There is no other class of objects in our culture of today, which become "fossilized" as fast as consumer electronics.