Glorious
Discord:
The Paintings of Mats Pehrson
by Suzanne Ramljak
Part poet, part journalist, Mats Pehrson looks at the world
with an eye towards life’s contradictions. While he can
paint sublimely lovely scenes, he sets out instead to
capture the tensions that teem all around us. “Every day
there is a struggle for life,” states Pehrson, “and that
contention is reflected in my work.”
Accordingly, the artist has enlisted collage as his medium
of choice. Pehrson uses collage to its best advantage, to
stage a range of startling juxtapositions. Whereas collage
usually entails “found” imagery, Pehrson
makes his found
images, personally taking all the photographs that populate
his work. Having captured the ripe moment or telling
fragment, he then composes these photos into a visual
crescendo. Transferred onto canvas or aluminum, the layered
images are further vitalized through various other media,
including oil, acrylic, charcoal, gesso, cement, shellac,
and sand.
Pehrson’s evolution toward such pictorial complexity was
gradual. Born in Sweden, he has remained responsive to his
changing surroundings, absorbing and reflecting his
environs. The Nordic Light of Pehrson’s native land no
doubt illuminates the radiant passages within his
paintings. A residency in Spain in the late 1990s resulted
in the “Signs and Symbols” series, which reflects the
influence of Catalan art, especially the boldly suggestive
work of Antoni Tàpies. The artist‘s various travels
continue to feed his art, but since 1986, when he moved to
New York City, this urban landscape has been his key
inspiration and graphic source.
After 2000, Pehrson shifted from largely abstract paintings
to increasingly photo-based works. Arranging multiple
images like a visual symphony, he develops inharmonious,
even cacophonous, effects. Billboards and Buddhas, hookers
and Hasids, guns and young girls, all jostle together in
his paintings, just as they do on the city streets.
Beholding his work is like watching a surreal documentary,
as you are confronted with the raw facts of life’s strange
splendor.
It
is hard not to think of Robert Rauschenberg upon first
seeing at works by Pehrson, who openly acknowledges this
creative forerunner. Both of these artists have produced
photo-based compositions with painterly passages, both
experimented with image transfer techniques, and both have
a socially conscious outlook. Nonetheless, Pehrson has a
distinct iconographic language with his own recurring
motifs. His talent as a painter imbues his works with a
lush fullness and rich color tonality. And Pehrson’s
understanding of pictorial space allows him to produce a
striking sense of depth.
While Pehrson may have strong social views, these are not
message paintings; they are more riddles than aphorisms.
This lack of resolve is by design. By granting room for
individual interpretation, Pehrson seeks to “provide
viewers with the opportunity to deepen their response” to a
given subject. Seducing with cinematic splendor and
painterly delight, Pehrson lures us towards a new
appreciation of life’s complexity. His paintings remind us
that experience itself is a collage of shifting fragments,
held together by our own sense of beauty and order.
Suzanne
Ramljak is an art historian, writer, and
curator.