CANDIDATE 2002

Jacob Dahlgren

Jacob Dahlgren was born in Stockholm in 1970. He graduated from the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1999 and continues to live and work in his native city. Dahlgren works with painting, sculpture and installations, often planning his works with a particular exhibition space in view. His three-dimensional works are like abstract paintings reaching out into the room. He uses strong colours and creates minimalist objects from, for instance, disposable plastic cups or plastic clothes pegs, as in the case of one of his abstract 'paintings'. The colours often have a 'pre-determined' order, based on the order of spools of coloured thread in the original package or a colour chart. He works with materials and forms of expression that were previously considered to be opposites; he balances on the boundary between everyday aesthetics and the geometric structures of minimalism. As an example, Dahlgren once had an entire wall painted in pink, and then covered it in a reflective metallic halftone screen reaching from floor to ceiling. He has also created objects which may at first glance appear to be architectural models of different types of high-rise buildings, with a clear colour scheme and symmetrical lines. By using parts of light fittings, clothes hangers, disposable cups and clothes pegs, he illustrates the insight that art can never - however abstract it may seem - isolate itself from the world in which it originates.