DANIEL SVARRE Father's Watch

The focal point of Daniel Svarre’s practice is a reflection on the relationship between power and powerlessness, inclusion and exclusion, often based on the mainstream group formations and hierarchies that one meets in public spaces. Based on objects from his own teenage years - scooters, school furniture and clothing - Daniel Svarre emphasizes on design and objects as important carriers and frames for interpretation at the time when the formation of the individual's overall identity begins. Based on his own subject and his own social context Daniel Svarre focuses on how the elements we surround ourselves with act as means of identification when relating between the ego, the social contexts and the surrounding community. It goes for e.g. clothing that we use as external signals on our standpoint, the community we identify with or it can be objects, furniture and design, with which we surround ourselves.

Many of the works in the exhibition are modified elements which many recognize - a school table, a bench, a briefcase. This also goes for Painted Shields (1-6) which is a series of shields from scooters for young people. The shields are painted and transformed which lead them to reminiscent masks. They signal a special bond and identification and also a definition of a standpoint.

The title work of the exhibition Father's Watch takes its formal basis of a wristwatch that belonged to Daniel Svarre’s father in the early 1980s. The watch is enlarged and stripped of recognizable details so that the work has a shape like a traditional framed wall object. The clock is both a personal memorial and at the same time an aesthetic, masculine power object. Besides it being an expression of the design trend of the early '80s it also reflects an authority and visibility. It is this link between the formation, authority and aesthetics, and the extent to which the social or cultural formation/malformation is passed on that interest Daniel Svarre.