What if you could create a structure that could contain all of your personal belongings within each room of your house and fit them together into a smaller, more condensed object? Does it make each object less significant now that is has become part of a bigger and more complex form or more significant now that all of those items are part of a whole new form? These are some of the questions one might ask while looking at the installations of Swedish artist, Michael Johansson.
Shelves, books, shoes, appliances, radios, tvs, boxes, suitcases, desks, vanities, clocks, chairs, glassware, and refrigerators, are only a few of things one finds when looking at one of Johansson’s complex installations. Creating new spaces within spaces of objects are something he excels at. While viewing, many different emotions are brought about by the sheer sentimentality of the chosen objects and how they coexist with each other. To fit all of your most prized possessions without destroying or compromising the originality of the object, one wonders how the actual artist feels towards each one as an individual. And then once, forced into cohabitation with the surrounding objects, one wonders do the feelings change now that it’s part of something bigger. Is the sentimentality taken away? Or is is simply transferred onto the finished puzzle?
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Johansson also takes these 3-D Tetris like structures to the streets, placing them in a new environment for all the world to see. Whether it be in the harbor, outside a restaurant, or rested by a fountain, people are now forced to interact with the artist’s most private possessions in their public space. With every stack, and every move, Johansson pushes his personal boundaries by exposing himself to the general public, who now know what goes on inside his creative mind as well as what kind of toilet paper he uses.
See Johansson’s installtions at The Inner Space
Group Exhibition
The Flat – Massimo Carasi, Milan (IT) Dec 1, 2009 – Feb 13, 2010
