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<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nInstallation view of Mikael Sandblom, Clouds and Waves at Gallery 1313<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sandblom\u2019s works are computer generated, that is, designed on the computer. These designs are then printed, or woven using a modern version of the Jacquard loom. As well, he paints over sections of the prints. In addition, on occasions he places plexiglass with patterns in front of the prints or weaves. These devices are used by Sandblom to emphasise the materiality of the layered surfaces, effectively enticing viewers to come up close. In doing so they see the images dissolve before their eyes. This reflects a strategy of attempting to mirror the way we perceive such ephemeral phenomena as clouds and waves in real time, that is, how we try to grasp what we see only to find it slip away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Sandblom doesn\u2019t want just to observe that, unlike a camera, we are incapable of capturing a mental image of waves on water, for instance. His larger point, one might say, is that there is nothing for us to capture. More precisely, the quicksilver nature of waves shows the limitation of our brain\u2019s capacity to record reality in the way a camera does. In general, even before a relatively static scene, the detailed grasp of our overall field of vision is limited to a very small area equivalent to that of a thumbnail at arm\u2019s length. All the other apparent details we \u2018see\u2019 in addition at the periphery radiating outward are, as Sandblom describes it, \u2018hallucinated\u2019 in the sense that we presume they are there when they simply are not.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nSteer Your Way, 2024, Acrylic, UV printed graphics on aluminum. Coated with Golden MSA Varnish with UVLS<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This fact about our perceiving, Sandblom maintains, generalises. When we perceive the world we are effectively making stuff up. It is understood that here we are concerned with visual perception, of course, as necessarily the subject of his artworks. In other words, perceiving is a constant process of interpreting and reinterpreting the things around us \u2013 thus assuming that an object in the distant, say, is a dog, but reinterpreting it as a pile of clothing as we approach it. And it could change again! Accordingly, Sandblom remarks: \u201cPerceiving creates the world. By looking carefully, we discover that we often unnecessarily narrow our experience of what is possible. At the same time, we make the mistake of believing that the world we conjure with our minds is complete, solid, and permanent. What we see is not all there is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We find here in his thinking a nod to idealism, namely the view that the world is the product of our minds, or our \u2018brains\u2019 as he would prefer to put it. It might be better to say that the world as we perceive<\/em> it is created by us, rather than the world as such. Quibbling aside, taken at face value this view inspires Sandblom\u2019s art. He sees an inventiveness in our perception that parallels artistic invention. The devices he uses in his artworks are designed to reveal how insubstantial or provisional our perceptions are on inspection.<\/p>\n\n\n Shore patterns, 2022, Jacquard Tapestry, UV printed aluminum and Plexiglas construction<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following this thought clouds are reinterpretable in an infinity of ways. Thus Sandblom is inspired to re<\/em>present clouds as floating worlds of architectural details \u2013 stairs, windows, walls, doors, or just cubes and planes, that bloom into a scene that is reminiscent of the paintings of the futurists who exulted over the triumph of the machine, or again those of the cubists with their madcap attempt to represent an object at every angle all at once. These cloud pictures have a wonderful explosive energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My allusion to futurism is not incidental here. Behind all the conceptual analysis that informs his art, Sandblom\u2019s works betray a strong aesthetic bias, one that is not unlike that of the futurists such as Umberto Boccioni. These are works that are clearly mediated by machine. He shares with the futurists a preoccupation with expressing, perhaps per impossibile<\/em>, dynamic forms on a static picture plane.<\/p>\n\n\n Toy Box, 2024, Acrylic, UV printed graphics on aluminum. Coated with Golden MSA Varnish with UVLS<\/p>\n\n\n\n The predominantly cold blue palette, emblematic of the elements of air and water, is punctured by the heat of uncontrolled, uncontrolable movement. There is something primordially delightful about Sandblom\u2019s pictures. The most successful of his cloud-based pictures are those that are spatially ambiguous, where background and foreground are hard to distinguish from one another, e.g., in his \u201cToy Box\u201d. His series of horizontal compositions based on the theme of waves is less frenetic, almost calming by comparison. I have personally had the privilege of witnessing the development of Sandblom\u2019s work over decades. It is only getting better. These sophisticated beautiful artworks are worthy of anyone\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n