Återberättelsen om Nattlogik / A Retelling of Nocturnal Logic

Ever since the comprehensive mid-career retrospective, Fickla vrårna, at Liljevalchs Konsthall (Liljevalchs Public Art Gallery), Stockholm, in the spring of 2006, painting has, to a greater extent than before, replaced installation as the chosen form of expression for Meta Isæus-Berlin. Colour pigments, telling seemingly endless stories as well as variations of earlier themes, now flow over multiple canvases in her studio, finally disclosing the (previously hidden) identities of the characters that (potentially) inhabited her earlier installations. Or is it, maybe, a completely different side of the story that now takes centre stage?

Isæus-Berlin’s works often feature surreal elements within familiar scenes, exploring the complexities of human emotions and experiences. The transition from installation art to painting allowed Isæus-Berlin to delve deeper into these themes, presenting faceless figures and surreal landscapes that evoke a sense of otherworldliness.

‘Realism doesn’t interest me; I find painting that way quite dull,’ Isæus-Berlin said in connection with her exhibition Återsken (19 February - 19 March 2021) at CFHILL in Stockholm, allowing herself to fully embrace her surrealist urges. Her show Nattlogik, at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde in Stockholm (5 October 2019 - 16 February 2020), had, by then, already sought to lure the extraordinary out of the seemingly ordinary; in the twilight interzone between waking and dreaming. Tapping into her personal, as well as the collective, subconscious, Isæus-Berlin surrendered to intuition and omens in order to explore fragmentary narratives and synchronicity.

In her introduction to the Waldemarsudde exhibition, Karin Sidén (born 1961, Swedish art historian, curator, author and director of Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde) wrote ([Eds.] Karin Sidén & Catrin Lundeberg, Meta Isæus-Berlin - Nattlogik, exhibition catalogue, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, 2019):

Her exhibition Night Logic can be likened to a wordless visual poem or a piece of music with themes and variations. Night Logic is the thought-provoking title of this exhibition. As mentioned earlier, the exhibition is based on content and actual reflections, on shifts in existence and on the states one can find oneself in between dream, sleep and wakefulness. Thoughts that arise in such a borderland have, like wakefulness, their own meaning and logic - a logic of the night. This gap in existence is described by the artist as ‘a liberating space of one’s own’, but also as ‘a passage to a wordless universe’. The artistic activity itself, the exhibited works and this exhibition can all be regarded as retellings of what has taken place in the form of external and internal events and states in and over time.

On the topic of ‘retellings’: Återberättelsen om Nattlogik / A Retelling of Nocturnal Logic was one of the focal points in the exhibition at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, together with the bronze sculpture Nattlogik / Nocturnal Logic (2018, bronze, 196 x 80 x 15 cm, Firestorm Foundation). In the hands of an exceptionally talented artist like Isæus-Berlin, a, seemingly mundane, everyday-object like a bed is transformed into a charged field on the border between the conscious and the subconscious. Isæus-Berlin has stated (‘Meta Isæus-Berlin in conversation with Paulina Sokolow’, interview, CFHILL, Stockholm, 1 March2021) how she is interested:

in the state of emerging from sleep in the morning. I’m interested in the fragility of waking up, and the importance of caring for your inner life. It has to remain intact until the world outside requires you to emerge from your bubble, your wishes be damned. That’s what waking up and having to live is like. I love living, but it’s difficult, right? You awaken to the world. That’s what it’s like for all people, for everybody – even the king.

Exhibitions

Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, Meta Isæus-Berlin - Nattlogik, 5 October 2019 - 16 February 2020, no. 11.

Literature

(Eds.) Karin Sidén & Catrin Lundeberg, Meta Isæus-Berlin - Nattlogik, exhibition catalogue, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, 2019, illustrated full page in colour.

Meta Isæus-Berlin, Tidskapslar. Alla mina installationer, 2019, mentioned p. 139 and 210; illustrated full page in colour, p. 149.