Fredrik Norén

From the serie Yesterdays News, mixed media, 2015-2016

My work comments our times, our view on life and the way we choose to categorize our environment. By dissolving the most well known and commonly occurning from our close environment, I perform a gentle scraping on the surface of a conception of the world we normally perceive as evident.

The play with the most usual and commonly occurning from our close environment, and consequently with our expectations of it, results in new objects that exist in between, below and above the groups in which we categorize our surroundings. In their new shapes the objects exist beyond definitions of pretty or ugly and in the interaction between playfullness and seriousness. The broken parts within every object are presented as both strength and flaw from a micro, as well as macro perspective and the objects can, in their new states, leave their original functions behind. This movement between roles challenges and questions our own perception and our expectations of our surroundings.

Through deformation new things appear, that have yet to recieve a function or role. New qualities have emerged at the expence of old ones and the objects can, in their new undefined states, be perceived as both better and worse than before.

The exhibition Planned Obsolescence at Galleri Thomas Wallner consists of sculptures, drawings and paintings.
The title of the show alludes to patterns within production industry and consumer habits and thereby allows the works to act as contemporary symbols of a time when broken objects around us have increased in numbers.

The series of paintings entitled Meant for Greater Things are based on found images of furniture made from old suitcases. Through this transformation process the suitcases are given a second chance.
By performing something similar to portrait painting and thereby isolating them from the context they were originally presented in, I want to dissolve the predefined meaning of what these objects are meant to communicate.
In the paintings the suitcases are humanized and tell a different story than they originally did.

The sculptures presented in the show are inspired by forms found in functional objects from our close environment. Doors, tables and chairs are pushed towards abstraction and take new forms, at the expence of their original functions.
The forms of these new, still unidentified, objects are foremost the outer shell of an internal happening, where objects with clear predetermined basic functions and in total lack of any real unicity or uniqueness, suddenly are allowed to achieve autonomy.
In their new states of being, as both better and worse versions of themselves, the sculptures manifest the contradiction between functioning according to a predestined pattern and the ability to be different.
The works illustrate broken, yet unique, objects wich, through their very existence and their newly achieved visibility and originality suggest that the preassumed certainties around us, the scene we all live and move around in on a daily basis, may not be as certain as we percieve them.

The exhibition also consists of a series of drawings entitled Out of Your Tree.
The works are made of bought paper rolls, which, through drawing, are regressively transformed into the resemblance of a memory of the origin of the basic material from which the rolls are manufactured.

Turn, Mixed media, 2015

From the serie Meant for Greater Things, Oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm, 2016

From the serie Out of Your Tree, Graphite on paper roll, 2015-2016