”Where one is the other must be.” The red neonskylten hangs in the gallery’s window with the text directed out towards the street. As a welcoming lantern in Norrtälje total darkness, it talks about community and reconciliation – some of the themes that characterise the Mats Hjelms artistry. There, to and with, the elements of a kind of salvation?
The wounded world of ruins and rubble of the past as the video installation ”The other shore” portrays seems in all cases to be in need of rescue. Hjelm creates a dense visual fabric through the distorted colors from the infrared film, and evocative interiors of the ejected betongskelett. The images are projected in a steady flow on both sides of a free standing wall which is positioned obliquely by the nedsläckta the exhibition space.
dominate the close-ups of the tropical warm seas. Of the ocean that unites and separates, that gives and takes life. Vattenytorna change of each other, gently rocking, constantly in motion. As a dreamed of a reference point on a paradise beach?
On the other hand pans the camera in slow transitions across the urban landscape where people live their lives – and I will let the images wash over me. Wandering between bildväggens different pages. The film will take me from Venice to the west and over the mighty ocean to Brazil and the united states. Conversely, in the early geographical routes and historical implications is that around the basic chords in the film, but without taking over as the leitmotif. Hjelm leaves over an open situation, for the viewer to discover and relate to.
”The other shore” has been shown in Rio de Janeiro’s modern art museum and some of the sequences and rumspresentationen returning from the other in respect of Hjelm, recently exhibited at Cecilia Hillström Gallery, and the former at the house of Artists.
a Still image from the Mats Hjelms video work ”The Other Shore” at Norrtälje konsthall. Photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger
Hjelm has a singular ability to charge his subjects, with him, a rowing boat is always more than just a craft. But the symbols weighing does not the imagery, on the contrary, the world animated. Hjelms very personal twisted emotional threads shuns not the solemn, here with reciterad text and bits from a radio play by Samuel Beckett.
if the forgotten memories, another tells rövarhistorier for those who want to listen, like a medieval jester wears a large träglasögon shaped like a evighetstecken. A third look with the open look straight into the camera and talking about her first meeting with the ocean. It was so great that he could not believe his eyes. The sea had become a soccer field. Storytelling is a significant part of the Hjelms collective dirge, a traderande of erfarenhetsfragment. I listen to the voices and sees a merry-go-round that spins, and spins, a metaphor for the wheel of life.
And so I hear the music. The gorgeous music is also a prominent feature in the Hjelms films. The aching melancholy from the sounding string instrument, the kora touches me strongly, and add additional layers. And when beckett’s avgrundsvrål and the other men’s comments on the state of things have fallen silent, replaced by the song from a girl and her friends in the choir. Their hopeful voices sing, sings of redemption.
