Martin Wickström

Swedish artist Martin Wickström blends signage, landscape, figuration, and Sixties paraphernalia into montage in his cinematic oil-on-canvas paintings. Composed into scrapbook-like compositions, the work splices found imagery and personal photography together to incorporate a kind of chance encounter that lives on in his photoconceptual realism. Intertwining both collective memory and introspective biography, Wickström references his extensive world travels, namely an impactful stint in Vietnam - and, in fusing somewhat dissonant aspects, procures a visual poetry that seems both reminiscent of our uncertain past and nostalgic for histories that never were. Like documentary vignettes, his paintings converse as puzzle pieces within a greater whole; an unmistakable façade that bespeaks a world of meaning lurking beneath the surface.

Martin Wickström lives and works in Stockholm and is one of the preeminent living painters in Sweden. His work resides in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, The Gothenburg Art Museum, and the Malmö Museum among others. He shows with Angelika Knäpper at Lars Bohman Gallery in Stockholm.

Submitted by Mike Weiss Gallery