”Paradiso (Out of the red)”
Galerie Forsblom

Three skilled painters are exhibiting at galleries in Stockholm. Birgitta Rubin suggests that you don’t miss out on Ulla Wiggen, Martina Muntzing and Martin Wickström.

Martin Wickström belongs to the generation of post modernist painters that freely borrows expressions from pop culture and advertising, as well as pop art and photo realism. Wickström’s exhibition at Galerie Forsblom is extensive, and the word ”Paradiso” in the title refers to the nostalgic movie ”Cinema Paradiso”.
Wickström himself glances back to his childhood in Finspång, based on the 5322 photographs his father left behind. I laugh with recognition, my own father also left a mountain of photographs behind, and he was an engineer as well, just like Wickström’s father. Our parents belonged to the first generation that could, relatively cheaply, buy cameras, travel abroad and proudly document it all.
For a slideshow Wickström has selected around 100 pictures where his mother is smiling and looking into the camera, apart from the second to last image where she has her back to the viewer, followed by an empty landscape.
There is a melancholy tone throughout the exhibition, the longing for a lost period of time, the childhood in a secure welfare state. There are several wonderful paintings, like the one where Martin the boy swims in the dark waters of the lake Skiren, the view through the blinds in the boy’s room and the extravagant car on the road in ”Winter in Canada”.
In some of the works, similar to how painter Ola Billgren worked in the 60’s, he employs the technique of a painterly montage, the canvas divided by two images with different references that clash in a striking manner. The paintings ”Into the blue” and ”Out of the red” are among the best works of Wickström up to date,
Apart from a couple of paintings with harsher light and muted colors, this is the strongest exhibition I have seen by Martin Wickström.

Birgitta Rubin