Good Advice – Tom Cullberg
Figuration and abstraction meet in the same painting when fields of colour strips are inhabited with isolated elements of pieces of furniture, houses and figures to create an atmosphere of mnemonic play between object, person and place/space/room. The group of paintings could be connected into various possible narratives or be seen as separate entities. The furniture suggests both an absence and a presence of the human body. The house in “The Island” is based on a building by the American architect Richard Meier. Cullberg has used it before in his paintings and placed it in different settings, here it is on an imaginary island. He often utilises images from architecture books as starting points for his painted houses to add an imagined lived-in ness.
Cullberg has a keen interest in furniture design, which is one of the starting points for the chair paintings, another is the sensory connection of the material: the wood, metal and leather and its connection to memory, combined perhaps most importantly with the function of the furniture as places for meeting, communication and contemplation. The furniture depicted, like Cullberg, originates from Scandinavia. Playing with the scale of the objects is also important, relating to the figures in the other paintings but also to the stages of growing up.
More details to come.