The time the repeal of Dahl's universe

Art+ FÖLJTiden repealed in Dahl's universumUlrika Stahre see a retrospective between the baroque and vardagsrumFoto: Mats Beach”It is not easy to capture an artist of Peter Dahl's caliber,” writes Ulrika Stahre, who have seen the retrospective exhibition ”Dahl's worlds” at the Sven-Harrys art museum in Stockholm.ART

Already utställningsaffischen is sinister. A train, steam locomotive with three wagons, plummets down from a collapsing bridge. The bridge seems to built in the sky, the lack of visible contact with other than the shimmering, baroque, the clouds. A disaster, or a frihetsdröm?

Both tracks, the imaginative dream, and a looming apocalypse, it would fit in the large retrospective exhibition with the Peter Dahl , which now appears at the Sven-Harrys
in the vasa Park in Stockholm. It is a long and productive life as a place and, yes, there they where: krogscenerna, vänporträtten, Proud city, the well-known suite Dreams
in the sofa.

”the designs have really always been the same since his teens. It is baroque scenes and it is vardagsrumsscener” said Dahl in an interview in the end of the 1980s, and it is between these poles we are moving also on the retrospektivet: between the inside and outside, private and public, familiar, and grotesque. Tender realism, and the blackest of satire.

It is not easy to capture an artist of Peter Dahl's caliber. The exhibition's opening makes it not easier. Here the focus is on the fantasy world he began to create already at the age of five, and which followed him through life: Caribanien, on the planet Boomi, a tvillingplanet to Tellus on the other side of the sun.

Caribanien is a powerful kingdom with its own history, media, geography, and court painter, by the name of Peter Dahl. Tennsoldaterna is a kind of base for it all, as well as model building and cataloging. It is a fascinating world, a play which has taken shape and changed over the years. As conceptually that really Elgaland/Vargaland, but without the relational part with the consulates and citizens. Caribanien is a place that is built and depicted, as well as other fantasy and fiction eventually seems to have gotten a life of its own.

Caribanien is both something deeply personal and close on the surreal elements, a klangbotten against the show since sounds. To see the fine suite Dreams in the sofa, where a couple's daily life with the coffee mug on the coffee table mixed with dreams of something else – the party of the upper class, or rebellion against it – is to be consigned not just to a gone small community with the material standard for all if not so much more, but also to the grotesque and satirical imagination.

A the paintings in the suite, " breakthrough in the caucasus, were seized during the dramatic forms when it was displayed in the Göteborg 1970 (Göteborgspostens headline ”Skräcktavla in the seizure” is an outstanding historical document) but were from shredded and burned. Lèse majesté cases, it was thought, when a woman bares itself had similarities with the princess Sibylla, and the man next to target their fleshy sex to her hold.

the Painting was not shown when Peter Dahl exhibited at Zorngården in Mora, 2011, because it risked to take all the attention. It is highly understandable, but few artists have, after all, got to see their art up for assessment in a courtroom and ”Sibyllatavlan” as well as the entire drömsviten is an important work in the aggregate his oeuvre.

It is a bit strange in the division of roles, where she dreams skitdrömmar about status and luxury, and he dreams of justice and revolt, we may be able to write on the period of the account. At Sven-Harry's is almost the entire suite in place, but unfortunately not the sequel Donald's dream, where the surveillance society along the right into the sofa, comfortable eftermiddagsslummer.

Deposit and humor, it is not what I associated Peter Dahl with a, rather with a number of paintings from different krogmiljöer, a little decadent, a little desperate, always with a mixture of undergångston and enjoyment. In Nöjestempel from 1986-87 runs the festandes legs together with the light, an illusion of enchantment is created – is the partying people even on the way out? Or down?

More nice krogskildringar carries a mood of German mellankrigstid, or the parisian absintdränkta decadence to turn up sekelskifte. It is in the 1980s, the old world is on its way out and the new one not yet here. In the rear view mirror it is easy to see the period, almost prophetic, the mood. But in their time, they expressed enough exactly the baroque period, it baccanala livsnjutandet. Except when it sits for any solitary man at a corner table.

Satirical almost in the top of the page are Two tourists, where the zoo, populated not by animals but by the people. Tourist looking, surar and requires. A period from the satire and the party offering the tranquil landscape paintings, primarily in the urban landscape. Marshalling yards, high-rise buildings in the suburb. You can choose if you want to see the desolate or quiet, I prefer the latter. It is restful, like a cool cloth to the forehead after a few festnätter, as the feeling then the rain stopped falling.

A small number of self-portraits displayed, from different times in the artist's life. Assets alongside the imagination, Caribanien, the adult's play, is these images of the ageing of the rare and beautiful forms its own circular motion. As if time can be suspended. And it can the the. The train will never fall down, the people at the table never get up to the final order, Sibylla forever naked.

Photo: Sven-Harrys KonstmuseumPeter Dahl: ”Who is the krogens king”, 1981, oil on canvas