Nattlogik / Nocturnal Logic

When depicted by Meta Isæus-Berlin a, seemingly mundane, everyday-object, like a bed, is transformed into a charged projection surface, where contradictory feelings and emotions manifest themselves. The artist touched on this phenomenon in an article (published in Svenska Dagbladet, 19 October 1996): ‘I imagine myself suddenly returning from a long trip and when I open the door of my home nothing is as it normally is. Details seem to be different. Not least my bed, gigantically charged as that item is, gives me a sense of uneasiness and makes me slightly lost.’

In the catalogue for Isæus-Berlin’s extensive mid-career retrospective, Fickla vrårna (8 April - 28 May 2006), at Liljevalchs Public Art Gallery in Stockholm, Niclas Östlind (curator of the exhibition) wrote (referring to the article):

In the quotation above she describes returning home from a journey and this naturally links up with time and movement but also - and not least - with seeing things anew. Meeting with the past is a prominent theme of her work; often in a seeming confrontation. The implacable way in which meeting up with something again clarifies changes (or their absence) in others or in oneself leads to a situation that is full of expectations as well as fears. But journeys are also intimately tied up with narrative and the narrative element is present in her work in various forms. […] The bed, the item of furniture mentioned in the quotation, is the site of our birth and our death. In bed we are cocooned in sleep and dreams and we are liberated from ourselves in orgasmic ecstasy. The bed turns up on several occasions in Meta Isæus-Berlin’s imagery and it is, as she puts the matter herself, ‘gigantically charged’.

When the bronze sculpture Nattlogik / Nocturnal Logic and the oil painting Återberättelsen om Nattlogik / A Retelling of Nocturnal Logic (2019, oil on canvas, 190 x 140 cm, Firestorm Foundation)were included in the exhibition Nattlogik at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm (5 October 2019 - 16 February 2020) the catalogue stated (under the heading Nocturnal Logic):

It began with the shift in perspective you can experience in the night. Insights, other ways of seeing familiar patterns, truths that might be painful. Old memories surface, as if carved in stone. You shake off the thoughts in the morning and welcome the bright and pure light of day. But sometimes when resting in the dark, and just having dreamt, those images can be clearer, more distinct and truer than any waking image. You are answered. With day logic, the questions become pompous or, alternatively, are forgotten. With nocturnal logic they blaze. In blessed moments they answer the difficult questions in life and everything becomes easy, you discern a pattern. But shift in perspective can capsize, and cause everything to slip away and create a need for going back to sleep immediately on waking. Sometimes, I think of nocturnal logic as a resistor to day logic. We need it, like a sanitary room, to gather strength. In there, we scrub off day logic, like a snake shedding its skin. The purpose of the exhibition is to attempt to visualise a gap consisting of reflections and shifts in reality,a liberating space of one’s own, but also a passageway. A mental labyrinth.

Isæus-Berlin’s use of everyday objects, like the bed, is, as stated, a firmly established practice in her production. Early examples are found in installations like Chair Beside Bed (1996, 280 x 160 x 75 cm, Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Sweden), which was included in the 1997 Venice Biennale (Deposition: Contemporary Swedish Art in Venice), as well as the solo retrospective Fickla vrårna. Other examples are The Seven Dwarfs (1996, 1000 x 120 x 280 cm) and The Abandoned Dwarfs (1999, 1000 x 120 x 280 cm). The flat bronze bed, with bedding and pillow, was first seen as part of the installation Purification (2018, bronze, water, pump, 200 x 80 x 125 cm; 42 x 44 x 85 cm, Public Art Agency, Sweden) created by Isæus-Berlin for Lund District Court, Lund, Sweden. In Tidskapslar. Alla mina installationer, 2019, Isæus-Berlin remembers:

I began with the idea of home as a common denominator, specifically a bed - after all, we all need to sleep. I chose a kind of bed people don’t use any more, the quintessential restful bed. The bed was of bronze, neatly made, old-fashioned, with a white pillow and a white bottom sheet edged with lace. The blanket and reading lamp were red. Over it all, water streamed. It rose up from beneath the pillow and cascaded in a waterfall over the foot of the bed. […] First I went looking for the bed. I found it in Nora, and the chair in Vasastan in Stockholm. I knew I wanted to work with Herman Bergmans Konstgjuteri. Without them, and our ongoing close consultations, this work would not have been possible. […] Creating a bronze sculpture that weighs 400 kilograms (882 pounds) is very complicated. It took about a year and a half: making the moulds, casting the pieces, building a copper basin, applying the patina. […] The fact that it works feels like a miracle.

Around the time when Purification was completed, Isæus-Berlin created another bronze cast of the bed (this time exchanging the red patina for a blue one) and made it the focal point for her exhibition Nattlogik / Nocturnal Logic at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde in Stockholm. As a matter of fact, it was the blue and white bronze bed, Nattlogik / Nocturnal Logic, that gave name to the entire exhibition (and adorned the cover of the exhibition catalogue). Isæus-Berlin wrote, about the exhibition, in Tidskapslar. Alla mina installationer, 2019:

It began with a radio show. A Latin scholar was speaking of a lost Arcadia, a land of peace, harmony, and joy. I had worked with Arcadia before over the years. […] The concept of Arcadia is beautiful, but frustrating and elusive. Its very essence is to be unreachable; it is the idea of the perfect place. The only way to reach Arcadia in life is to locate it inside yourself. That can be just as supernaturally perfect, and slightly more achievable. So I built a mirror image of the real Arcadia and situated it in my interior. In other words, I built it from my own symbols of life - the table, the bed, the lamp, the everyday room. I mirrored them as they hung from the ceiling in the large studio at Waldemarsudde, so that the first thing visitors saw was an imaginary horizon at a height of 145 centimetres.

Nattlogik / Nocturnal Logic, ‘a paean to the space of release between watchfulness and falling asleep’, according to Isæus-Berlin, was hung, back to back on a freestanding wall, with the painting Återberättelsen om Nattlogik / A Retelling of Nocturnal Logic, ‘so you couldn’t see them both at the same time’:

When I walked into the large studio at Waldemarsudde the other day, I felt the great space all around me under the curving ceiling, and saw the shimmering line through the middle of the room in front of me. And that, I suppose, is how everything begins: without words. Incidentally, I always use single beds to denote existential loneliness.

Edition: 3 + 1 AP.

Provenance

CFHILL, Stockholm, 1100 Degrees. From Constantinople to Cyborg futurism - A story in bronze, 3 December 2021 - 7 January 2022.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired at the above).

Exhibitions

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

Literature

(Eds.) Karin Sidén & Catrin Lundeberg, Meta Isæus-Berlin - Nattlogik, exhibition catalogue, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, 2019, compare version illustrated full page in colour, as well as on the cover.

Meta Isæus-Berlin, Tidskapslar. Alla mina installationer, 2019, compare version mentioned p. 139 and 210; illustrated full page in colour, p. 148.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation