We tried to stay true to the idea of creating a room of the ‘other’, and after three days placing images, sculptures and prints alongside with a velvet armchair and sofas, the blinds came down and the magic was switched on.

Emir’s video installation played a looped film from Greece. It showed the sea on a hot day, and a freight boat going nowhere to the sound of zikadas. Stefano’s embryonic figures, both menacing and fragile glimmered in the glass cases. My oversize woodcut peonies stretched alongside the wall, each bathing in light. The portable temple swayed to the movement of people walking in the room, and Cezanne’s armchair sat waiting, empty in front of images and sculptures.

I had, in the end, a distinct sense that this had become a room for being. As members of the public began to stream in, they sat down in the sofas , sometimes silent , sometimes talking- but what was most noticable was how their speed changed. They began to look, and if one aspect of art is to make us look closer, I could see this happen in the room of Gallery Valfisken.

Emir’s small cast iron , hand held sculptures echoed the forms of his larger stone work. One journalist was surprised when encouraged to touch the sculptures. - ‘Is that allowed?’ , she asked. It is important to touch, we answered.

In that way - sculpture is more democratic than images, because it can be ’seen’ by the visually impaired through touch, just as the room could be experienced in sound as well as through sight. Thus, the room became more of a total art work, drawing on the Baroque era’s idea of the arts. Paintings, sculptures, sound, scent and theatre should all come together in a magnificent spectacle - in a ‘total artwork’. Such a room can still be experienced in an Italian or Spanish catholic church, where the insence scent the air and rise in smoky lines to music while the priest officiates in grand gestures to a backdrop of hope and damnation in pictures and sculptures. It is a grand idea- the ‘Total Art Work.’

“Fika” is a Swedish word filled with the “suchness” drinking coffee together. ” Fika” happens in mid-morning, and in mid-afternoon. It happens between friends when serious issues need to be resolved, and when frayed ends of relationships call to be mended. In the workplace, the Swedes organize the “fika” moments- and assign cake rotas and collective contributions to the coffee fund. In UK offices, most keep their own coffee in their desk and drink in silence in front of the computer screen. That carries non of ‘coffee-suchness’.

The ‘fika-paus’ print series is a tribute to the best of Swedish collective behaviour. The prints will show a coffee cup and a slice of cake and will be priced to what the image shows. If it is a print of a cappucino, a magazine, carrot cake and lover ( the lover is not included in the price) add up the items and that’s how much the print costs. Ordinary pleasures, but moments that can encourage dialogue and resolve concerns.

To me, these are Swedish bitter sweet moments that I recapture, and try to hold in a city , this London , which hardly permits something so frivolous as a break in striving. To some extent, through these pictures I draw my own return to Sweden, and what they show is nothing extra-ordinary nor tormented, but a sense of that in the end- all we have is daily life and moments together, and that is what needs to be made magical.

Also, the iconography of the ‘fika-paus’ print series begin to plays with the term ” paridigmatic particularity”, a term designated to making the intimate and ordinary universal, and act of looking closer at the easily missable. Therefore the ‘fika-paus’ print series are socially engaged, hwover trivial their subject matter.
The American printmaker / artist Robert Gwathmey who developed his work during the renaissance of American Printmaking- the WPA Graphic Arts projects- answered when ‘ asked if he was a “social artist” ? - “I’m a social being and I don’t see how you can be an artist and be separate…Artists have eyes…You go home. You see things that are almost forgotten. It’s always shocking.” ( http://www.artsconnected.org/artsnetmn/identity/gwath.html accessed 8 May 2009)

But why does life through the eyes of socially engaged artist have to be shocking? Or is it shocking that we don’t see life in front of us- unfolding, breathing, and dreaming? Why can’t the things we see, when looking closer, be captivating, because it is soothing simplicity and simply shared? These are our moments to be in , when we stop, look and listen closely - to each other.

The ‘fika-paus’ print series are dedicated to my childhood friend Petra Thorell who I found again after a long silence, to Anna Bergbom, my comrade in prints and for all the moments over a cup of coffee and carrot cake. The ‘fika-paus’ - red armchair’ print is for my mother, being together - really talking at Konditori Hollandia in Malmo.

This is me.

Fuzuko Highschool Yearbook picture, Kanazawa, Japan

The show’s central point is a ‘pillar’ made from large prints. The pillar is to function as the central axis, which around the rest of the images, sculptures, paintings and prints turn. Some of the work can only be experienced as the video installation by Emir, while other pieces- such as Stefano’s ‘ Black Water’ sculpture groups and my ‘Fika-Paus’ ( coffee moment prints) can be bought. Emir, Stefano and I ask: Where does the role of art fit - experiencing it publically- or owning it to then experience it privately? What do you do with art?

We just make it. Making ‘it’, the art- is in our bones.

Emir’s pillar. Now there will be prints standing- and hanging- all off and away from the wall!

I watched an elderly man strolling in to the gallery. It was empty, and peaceful with the mid-afternoon sun streaming down from the skylites.He was alone, looking here and there at things but seemed only half-interested, then made a few rounds and left after five minutes. A family followed, and again, made a circle or two - and left. Too much visual stuff in this world, I thought, and in the gallery, the silence of drawings compete with the image-noise in people’s heads.

How to help people stop pause and truly see what is around them? Perhaps to re-enact the essence of a Japanese tea-ceremony, where the art in the alcove, with its flower arrangement is to be truly seen, as is the mist rising from the boiling water in a room with minimal parts. The plain walls, the floor devoid of tables and chairs encloses each sound, each movement - to become a contemplation.

I re-build the tea-room as I complete the ‘ collapsible temple’ to hang suspended in three sheets forming an alcove, a room for one only, from the ceiling. It’s a print which can be stepped into, and be stayed still in. Would the older man do that- step in to my ‘collapsible temple’ which is also physical manifestation of my own search and relation to the visceral print?

As it is in Sweden, I will offer the man an armchair, a table as well to sit down by,to rest, and to see what surrounds him in the gallery which has now become a laboratory for the senses.

The gallery is a highly accessible space, filled with light and calm.

The library next door is filled with a low level humming of focussed readers.

Outside, daily life moves on. There are errands to run, coffee to drink and the dog needs a walk. Why would anyone care to stop and walk in to the gallery, just to see?