The symbolic infrastructure that Johan Svensson’s work feeds of is reality through the myths generated by our political landscape. His work is characterised by the fact that it redraws this landscape, its characters and more importantly its horizons. Irony plays an important part, not just in the final resolution of his installations, but in the way he selects and treats his themes. Irony is one of the possible forms that critical distance can adopt.

A good example of this is the projection Grass. In an almost naïf manner, the artist has produced a series of drawings of straws of grass: a small group seemingly made up of identical individuals that sway in the wind. A part of this group has been cut; the other half is reaching a similar height. Numerous different readings may be hidden behind the unconsciousness of this image. This society of individuals may be an ordinary reflection of many other societies and many other individuals, and it is precisely in the seemingly banal that one has to be particularly alert.

The notion of simulation is especially important in Svensson’s work, which is a distorted recreation of events and realities that, though apparently lacking in the significance of the big events, day by day build our individual awareness as members of a community. More importantly, they play a key role when it comes to activating or de activating our belief in our capacity to change the present state of affairs.

/Chus Martinez 

www.johansvensson.net