My mother had died and everything changed. I had to go to her home on an island, far in the North and clear out a lifetime. With my phone camera I documented the dense old fashioned family albums and then burnt them in the oil drum. I burnt almost everything. Two days of fire.

 

In old photos everyone is almost always smiling. A photograph was rare and more valuable then. The names of the pieces come from the names of my parents, brother and grandparents. I used their photos in the artworks, sometimes they were buried as the process continued sometimes small shadows remained.

 

We all have ghosts whether we know It or not. We all will become ghosts whether we want to or not. 

 

The artworks originally began as a high profile adverting campaign that I shot for the famous bed maker Hastens. A wonderful Swedish family company that had gradually become much more than just a client.

At its source it combines highly complex High speed photography with a custom built synchronised detonation system (thank you Serge Roux) The simplest description of the process is bouquets are frozen with liquid nitrogen then exploded from within. It was a long five day shoot with a big wonderful team. And Made possible by a truly enlightened client. The photographs revealed magically something impossible to see, a micro second of destruction and revelation. 

 

When I retuned from the North I began to slowly rework some of these original photographic images. Over painting and sampling of art history,  using elements of impressionist master works from Redon, Renoir, Gaugin, Rousseau, Monet.  I tried to untether the images, make them more ethereal ungrounded something akin to astrophotography.  I added portraits of my ancestors. The titles come from their names. The final artworks represent  a long process of deconstruction and reconstruction, over painting, underpainting.

 

 Good memories of family weave with traces of the invisible, beautiful chaos, Joy Storm.

​

​

​

​

The artist wishes to thank, Jan and Lukas Ryde, Tobias Brahmst, Jean Philip Woodland, The family Roux, Eryka Pruszynska, Claire Sibille