Drömmar och mardrömmar / Dreams and Mardreams

Meta Isæus-Berlin has long been acknowledged as one of Sweden’s most successful and multi-faceted artists. For decades she has constantly pursued new paths in her ongoing exploration of the possibilities of art to reach out, provoke reactions and stir up thoughts in the viewer.Her ingenious and often strikingly technically advanced installations, for example, have met with great success in Sweden as well as internationally. To this can be added her extensive production as a painter, draughtswoman and sculptor.

A common feature of Isæus-Berlin’s multifaceted production is her interest in (conscious or unconscious) shifts in perspective in human existence. Small, seemingly insignificant, fluctuations in everyday contexts that herald future events or bear witness to things from the past. Her art therefore moves across several time planes where the, seemingly uneventful, present is affected by expectations and experiences alike. Following in the distinct footsteps of Symbolism and Surrealism, Isæus-Berlin’s paintings thus refer to different states of consciousness and emphasise the importance of the subconscious (often linked to dreams and inner worlds), where the artist’s interest in existential questions is given considerable space.

Meta Isæus-Berlin, with her unique ability to blur the line between reality and dream, thus plunges deep into the realm of the subconscious, where her home is the centre and starting point of everything she does, and her colourful and vibrant paintings intertwine fragments of that home with myths and spiritual elements. These aspects were touched upon by Mattias Enström in connection with Isæus-Berlin’s exhibition Mörkersyn (30 January - 13 March 2016) at Bror Hjorths Hus, Uppsala, Sweden:

With her paintings, Meta Isæus-Berlin leaves the viewer in a vibrant field of colours and moods, somewhere between an inner and outer landscape. But her paintings should probably not be described in words. They speak a language of their own. A language that is both foreign and strangely familiar. Both precise and vaguely dreamlike. Myths, dreams and symbols are woven together in paintings that balance the representational with the abstract. The paintings are as much images of the space of thought as spaces for thought. Often with an opening that leads on in an indeterminate direction: upwards, downwards, inwards or outwards, towards the light or the abyss.

When Drömmar och mardrömmar / Dreams and Mardreams had its first public outing, in the 2008 exhibition Avtryck och filter / Imprinting and filtering, at Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm, Isæus-Berlin contributed the following lines to the exhibition catalogue:

I was always fascinated by dream and reality – how they fertilize and traverse each other and occasionally change places. And by the course of time. Even in a furious pace of existence, you may feel that time stands still. Recurrence, the same theme, with eyes wide or shut. Images of reality do not exist, as soon as I try to create them, they disappear. Slowly pictures emerge by sorting and filtering. They originate in a web or a landscape shaped by this slithering interplay. The exhibition is a wave motion between imprinting and filtering. Impressions and processing and the tension in between.

The main author of the 2008 exhibition catalogue, Monica Nieckels (born 1946, Swedish freelance curator and retired curator at Moderna Museet, Stockholm) elaborated (under the heading ‘What the Memory Selects and the Dream Sees’) on Isæus-Berlin’s reflections:

Paint enables Meta Isæus-Berlin to move further into the imaginary spaces. The narratives have been liberated and the magical and irrational qualities have taken over the dark sections of the canvas and are now in possession of that which we cannot see but only sense. […] Meta Isæus-Berlin follows traces in everyday life. She is reminded of feelings and events that have taken place in dreams or in reality. The canvas becomes the stage on which the drama is enacted, mixing widely different events. Time flows through the filter of memory and the paint freezes time for a moment and makes an imprint. […] Thus, the invisible - that which takes place in light and darkness - is given form in her paintings. It fills the stage and invites us to places we recognise but have never really visited. With a steady brush and steady feeling, Meta Isæus-Berlin takes us on adventures that we never imagined existed.

Provenance

Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm Avtryck och filter / Imprinting and filtering, 25 September - 10 October2008.

Firestorm Foundation.

Exhibitions

Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm Avtryck och filter / Imprinting and filtering, 25 September - 10 October2008.

Borås Konstmuseum (Borås Art Museum), Borås, Sweden, Sömngångerskan, 20 October 2018 - 3 Februari 2019.

Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art, Vaasa, Finland, The Philosopher, 2 November 2024 - 29 March 2025.

Literature

Monica Nieckels, Avtryck och filter / Imprinting and filtering, exhibition catalogue, Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm, 2008, illustrated full page in colour.

Håkan Nilsson Sömngångerskan. Meta Isæus-Berlin, exhibition catalogue, Borås Konstmuseum (Borås Art Museum), Borås, Sweden, 2018, illustrated full page in colour, p. 43.

The Philosopher, exhibition catalogue,Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art, Vaasa, Finland,2024, illustrated in colour.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation