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MEANWHILE
Oscar Berglund
MEANWHILE indicates a breathing space where time and action shifts to “another” place or “another” persons moment. Two physically incompatible but also simultaneous conditions are able to adapt a radical new meaning in the virtual world of computers. Places, phenomenons, or moments outside of our own physical environment can immediately become available to us in a form of electro-optic universe. We can disappear into this “other” place or the “other” persons moment and for a while let it fuse together in our own experienced “reality”.
Retro-nostalgia and low-tech aesthetics
In the universe of Oscar Berglund one can’t avoid noticing the essential electro-optic force of attraction that apparently lies in an underlying state of mind – a self-referring refuge, clearly emanating from a boyish retro-nostalgic love to – a fascination of the low-tech aesthetics in the early years of computer graphics and sci-fi culture.
A virtual journey into space
With an initiative approach to the exhibition at henningsen contemporary we find two vast paintings expressing Berglunds characteristic formal and aesthetic choices. With roots in graphic imagery of post-pop art, they are both made in different coloured tape. On one of them the title “MEANWHILE” is written across the canvas with big pixel led letters and on the other one we see “The Mothership” originating from the early arcade game, Space Invaders. A shinning advertising sign for the webpage “Problem Production”, made for the occasion by Berglund, encourages the viewer to compete for the places in a classic high score list. This high score can be played online from home or at the exhibition from a sofa in the centre of the gallery space. From this intimate, homelike sphere Oscar Berglund seems to set the stage for a virtual journey into space. Also, breaking down from the ceiling like laser beams, long strip lights in different colours are hanging in one part of the gallery space. In the opposite part of the gallery we are invited to join a space travel by two large scaled video projections showing an animated starry sky and a textual dialog from the scene in Stanley Kubricks 2001 where Dave turns of the computer Hal causing the technology to collapse.
With his work Oscar Berglund seems to visualize the breathing space occurring within the exhibition – the time we spend when our thoughts more or less intentionally flee the reality of everyday life. Also tempting, are the different meetings in the breathing space, Meanwhile, and the artistic form of organization.
The room intensifies – omnipresence, instancy, and the definitive escapism have already enlightened its aesthetic form: from the simple pastime with the interface of computer games between its players, to sci-fi phantasms about life and other activities in space.
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