Galleri Flach has the great pleasure to inaugurate the spring program with the exhibition ”Dead Bastards” by Patrick Nilsson. It is also the title of a grand series of gouaches that previously has been exposed at the Gothenburg Museum of Art in 2013, and now for the first time is on show in a gallery exhibition in Stockholm. It also includes two brand new works; the series Shutter, drawings in dry pastel and the surreal sculpture Life (See you later devastator).
Patrick Nilsson’s oeuvre has always moved between the bright and the dark, the black humour and the disarming laughter. It is a contrasting world containing stories of playfulness and brutality, mediated by a grid of different perspectives and interpretations. His art raises questions about issues that we normally avoid. A recurring theme focuses for instance on male violence and aggression, often portrayed in a grand architecture where drawing, ornamentation, lines and details create an exterior and apparent harmony. In the series, ”Dead Bastards”, we meet an imaginative brutality, but this time in miniature and in an unexpected form. In small beautiful and detailed silhouettes, like those that became popular during the late 1700s, we see a number of shadowy head profiles. They evoke a bygone era in Western culture, history and a time of glorification of power, games and colonialism. In the seemingly harmless profiles emerge however gruesome stories. Using various tools, nails and other weapons directed a merciless violence against heads in the form of pure executions. The approaches are so inventive that they inevitably both amuse and fascinate the spectator, evoking both black humour, seriousness and creativity.
In the new series ”Shutter” the spectator meets a different approach. Middle-aged men are portrayed with their faces directed towards the viewer with closed eyes. In the detailed drawings lines, furrows and wrinkles of the faces emerge. They exude life experiences, caught in an unexpected moment. It is about men beyond the violent battles for which the saw, hammer and the nail is part of a human and undramatic life. Through various expressions the spectator meets a thought-provoking exhibition, filled with a rich and subtle imagery.