Markus Åkesson — The Woods — Da-End Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 21 → November 2, 2013

The Woods is a series of new works by Swedish painter and sculptor Markus Åkesson, in what will be his debut solo exhibition in France.

Born in 1975, Markus Åkesson creates figurative paintings with a burdensome and poetic atmosphere. The artwork entitled The Woods II represents the starting point of the phantasmagorical journey to which Åkesson invites us; a journey through the dense Scandinavian forests where the fauna and the flora stand alongside the humans’ realm. The dusky-colored aquatic and vegetal elements, the muddy peat lands and the small ponds deep in the woods, form a hymn to Nature and to Nordic legends.

At nighfall, the boundaries between dreams and reality shade off. It is this indistinct interval that Markus Åkesson likes to explore. Slowly, he takes us to the hereafter, in a metaphorical and psychical movement of catabasis. Through his paintings, Åkesson revisits the Orphic theme of the descent to the Underworld. By crossing the limits of the living world, the protagonists in his artworks defy their fears and the darkness. This initiatory trip appears to be an actual rite of passage, scattered with physical hardship and spiritual questioning.

The mystery atmosphere that prevails is accentuated by the luminous and intense palette of the painter. Filled with symbols, the cinematic scenes imagined by Markus Åkesson implicitly reveal a complex psychoanalytical content. By picturing children put to the test, the artist emphasizes in fact the depth of the spirit’s uproar. The introspective quality of this body of work seems to borrow from the literary genre of the coming-of-age Roman, even more than from Scandinavian folklore.

Lastly, several glass sculptures of the artist, evoking as well the earthly and underwater fauna, will be exhibited. Hailing from the province of Småland, incidentally known as the Kingdom of Crystal, Markus Åkesson retains a particular appeal for this material, with which he creates totemic sculptures with organic shapes.

“My decorated objects relate to the ‘cult-objects’ that in past times offered mankind a channel to a fictional world for those moments when reality seems static and pointless.”