Paul Fägerskiöld: January 1 2100

The Swedish playwright August Strindberg is less known for his intense periods of dedication to painting and photography in the 1890s. In an essay from 1894, ‘Chance in Artistic Creation’, he describes methods he employs, describing his wish to imitate nature’s way of creating. His text later proved to be surprisingly predictive, capturing the automation techniques of the twentieth century. His method involved starting randomly, trusting nature’s inherent desire for form, with the picture finally evolving out of the paint, almost by itself. Like Fägerskiöld’s tactile imagery, Strindberg emphasized the painting surface with such passion that not only does it provide an image of nature, it almost gives the impression of being nature: seascapes or landscapes half-embedded in the material, like a world in the process of being created. In terms of painting, the surface becomes fractural, resembling the texture of the earth. Fägerskiöld does not paint specific nature – his paintings are nature as behaviour. No colour is just one colour. There is always a shadow and nuances. Its materiality and texture are always active, never just monochrome or flat. That is the true nature of painting.

Strindberg’s ‘Celestographs’, with their weathered surfaces, also seem to be in physical alliance with nature. Strindberg’s experiments were quite direct interactions between technology and nature. He would place a photographic plate in the window, exposing it to the starry sky. His photographs actually look like celestial scenes. But you could just as easily see dust or a fragment of soil. The greatness of such imagery, whether in film, photography or painting, lies in offering this double vision, where the starry night and material matter connect and the microcosmos and macro cosmos affect us viscerally. In fact, science today believes that to be true. Stars are formed equally by dust and gas, born in places called nebulae. Over time, due to gravity, and through a process best described as fusion, the nebula collapses to form a nucleus, and that is how, in the midst of a cosmic spark, stars are born. From an unearthly perspective, this also means that we are actually made from stardust.

The term ‘birth’ is often used as a descriptive way of grasping a natural process so immense that it really is ungraspable. Nature has that effect on humans. Conceiving ‘landscape’ painting in the age of the Anthropocene recognises that to be really truthful representation must incorporate our behaviour and language. Rooted in the famous phrase attributed to the Greek philosopher Protagoras from 6th century BC, ‘the measure of all things’ refers to a similar anthropogenic notion of the world. This would later become the Latin phrase ‘homo mensura’ meaning man is the measure of all things, implying that humans use themselves as benchmarks for understanding the world. Fägerskiöld’s paintings of future starry-night skies above us eliminate discussions about true or false. 

We perceive neither a ‘true’ nor a naturalistic imagery from the surfaces of the paintings. Instead, the image spaces open outwards, connecting with the physical space where we, the viewers, are placed. We let go of that specific imagery we try to maintain from the image. Instead, our minds start to wander off into the landscapes of the future: looking southwest in the year 2100 at Lagos, Nigeria, predicted to be the biggest city in the world by then. Or perhaps looking north on 1 January 2100 at Copenhagen. Will we still be here by then? Will our children be here – will they even perceive our world in the same way? Leaving us with such questions, the exhibition space morphs into something else. Like a time machine, the paintings reconnect us with our own position in life. That is what makes them so believable.