Summary, exhibition catalogue, Waldermarsudde art Museum, 2020
In the late autumn of 2020 and the winter of 2021, the seminal exhibition Öar (Islands) is shown at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde in Stockholm. The exhibition, which presents a number of sculptural works, films and audio works, as well as installations, by the artist and director Karl Dunér (b. 1963), is shown on the top floor and in the film room at Waldemarsudde. The exhibition is accompanied by this richly illustrated publication with articles about the artistry of Dunér by author and playwright, Magnus Florin and by Meike Wagner, Professor of Theatre Studies. The publication also features texts by Karl Dunér as well as a newly written short novel by author Aris Fieretos, dedicated to Karl Dunér, and inspired by a work in the series Trådar (Threads) in the exhibition. A central work of the exhibition is the installation Ön (The Island) from 2020, which is shown in the Studio at Waldemarsudde.
The Island 2020 consists of nine automated puppets placed on a low podium. When upright, each puppets measures about 140 cm. They can get up by themselves, turn and lower their heads, lift a hand, an arm, crawl, fall asleep and fall. They all look like they breathe when their chests and shoulders move as if with the rhythm of breathing. Each puppet has its own individual breathing.
The elemental situation has its base in waiting and listening. The movements are such that it is sometimes hard to determine whether the puppets are immobile or if they actually move. The puppets can communicate with one another. This is especially noticeable when they turn, breathe and in other types of reactions. The courses are autonomous and cannot be repeated.
At a certain time, every day, a longer predetermined play is acted out by the puppets. Apart from this, they govern themselves. The technique was developed by the engineer Myles Severud, in close collaboration with puppet- maker Tomas Lundquist.
One point of departure for the project Island is a play by the Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949). In 1890 he wrote the play Les Aveugles (The Blinds). It deals with 12 blind women, men and children, who are marooned on a desert island where they await their missing leader.
The technique behind The Island is inspired by Bunraku, a 300-year old form of Japanese puppet theatre, where meter-long puppets are handled by three puppeteers in black. In The Island, the relationship is reversed. The puppets govern themselves with the assistance of museum staff.
The exhibition also includes a series of works entitled Scener 1-10 (Scenes) from 2014-2018. Each sculpture in Scenes has its own interior light that alternately increases and fades. Every sculpture has a circadian rhythm of its own. They also have sound spaces collected from different places at different times. Six of the sculptures have built-in movements. A figure that can move chooses for itself if it is going to move and where to. The movements are slow and change constantly. They cannot be repeated. Movement, sound and space can be observed like at a stage — like a play — or like the recollection of a scene.
In the film room at Waldemarsudde a series of works with the title Vatten- kikare (Aquascope), from 2018-2020, is shown. The implement used for making the films and the images is a two-meter long glass tube resting on a center line. The camera is attached to one end of the tube, which is covered in various filters, papers and materials. Small slits let in light. Each film is a coherent action, where the movements of the tube and the water, coupled with how materials are pulled away or added and light is admitted and disappears, creates the image we see. The C-prints on matte paper, were produced using the same technique. What we see consists of light admissions and water.
Presented in the exhibition is also a series of works entitled Plåtar (Tin- plates) – Imaginary Islands 1–5, 2018, 6–14, 2020. Tin-plates is based on islands from The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi. Full-scale charcoal drawings are reversed on the back sides of cut-out plates. The plates are warmed up by a special machine after which they are worked by hand with lead-filled wooden mallets of various sizes.
In the exhibition the works Sven och Ingvar (Sven and Ingvar) can also be seen. A few years before the demise of actor Sven Lindberg (1918-2006), they recorded Raymond Queneau’s book A Hundred Thousand Million Poems. That is, not the entire book, which contains as many poems as the title suggests, but rather their far fewer components. These are made up of 10 sonnets, each consisting of 14 lines. In this version, Sven is heard reading a new poem every three minutes. He will thus finish reading in a couple of million centuries. Each sonnet is heard once and then never again.
In the two sculptures SVEN – jag minns vattenkranarna i Knox (Sven – I remember the water taps of Knox), and SVEN – Hebdomeros i Canterels trädgård (Sven – Hebdomeros in the Garden of Canterel) as in the sculptures INGVAR – Kort Dröm 1–2 (INGVAR – Brief Dream 1–2), a similar sonnet form is used. Here, the lines are often replaced by sound recordings from various places, by silences or, as in INGVAR – Brief Dream 1–2, by the breathing of actor Ingvar Kjellson (1923-2014). Among the lines that can be heard now and then in the SVEN sculptures, one especially notices I remember by Georges Perec and Hebdomeros by Giorgio de Chirico. In the sculptures INGVAR – Brief Dream 1–2 some late texts by Samuel Beckett, can sometimes be heard. They were recorded with actor Ingvar Kjellson a couple of years before he passed away 2014. The combination of sound, text and silence cannot be repeated.
The innovative exhibition The Islands is complemented by artists talks and a concert.