25 April - 14 June, 2009
Lars Bohman Gallery
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Lars Bohman Gallery has the pleasure to show Jarl Ingvarsson's exhibition "BLAM". Ingvarsson's work expresses sheer joy and contentment, often unheard of in contemporary art, but it is set against a backdrop of seriousness and moral stature found throughout his oeuvre, as in the early painting "Don't give up Cuddy", 1999, ""Lazarus", 1999 or in his quasi iconic paintings from his previous exhibition "Flowers".

Ingvarsson uses prosaic, everyday objects as his motives; office chairs, scrap bins and bottles with detergent, show up helter-skelter amongst forceful fields of paint. The objects depicted are without a glorious past or a bright future but still, or perhaps because of that, imbued with unruly joy and energy as well as the jarring dissonances and the flotsam and jetsam of life in general. In Evelyn Waughn's "Brideshead Revisited", the young the artist Charles Ryder chooses magnificent Beauty to later in life come to an understanding of other values that leads to his conversion to catholicism - Ingvarsson chooses life as it is and a ravenous way of painting that encompasses all possible motives and materials. In the works in the current exhibition, "BLAM", figure well-known characters from cartoons together with letter-boxes, candy-wraps and bottles of detergents. Orville Snorkel, Donald Duck, the old salt from the Danish cartoon Barnaby Bear, and Dagwood Bumstead are surrounded with graphic signs denoting speed, power and loud sounds. On the surface of the paintings, Ingvarsson scribbles fragments of words or the onomatopoetic exclamations such as BLAM, found in cartoons, creating a clash of language, form and colour.

Jarl Ingvarsson's work is to a part influence by the wild painting of the 1980's and while studying at the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm he briefly had Jörg Immendorff as professor, and another part shows close ties with earlier Swedish expressionism. Occasionally Ingvarsson has documented these affinities in paintings such as " Viksten, Wigert and I", 1991, about his years at the Academy, or in " X:et's Cardigan", 1997, about his relation to Swedish Expressionst and chronicler of everyday life, Sven X:et Erixon.
Jarl Ingvarsson is born in Asmara, Eritrea, in 1955. He is educated at the Royal Academy of Art, Stockholm, 1978-1982. He lives and works in Sparsör, Sweden. He has had numerous exhibitions in Sweden and internationally since his debut in 1982 and is represented in many public collections such as Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Malmö Art Museum, Norrköping Art Museum, Sundsvall Art Museum, Borås Art Museum, Collection Saltarvet, Fiskebäckskil and Ludwig Forum, Aachen. In 2008 and 2003 he participated in Carnegie Art Award. He has also made several public works such as Landvetter airport, Göteborg, and Kulturhus and will show at Saltarvet, Fiskebäckskil, Summer 2009. "BLAM" is his fifth exhibition at Lars Bohman Gallery since 1993. For further information and press images please contact the gallery.Operakällaren, Stockholm. Since 1996 Ingavarsson is a member of the Royal Academy of Art. Jarl Ingvarsson recently had an exhibition at Nässjö Kulturhus and will exhibit this summer at Saltarvet, Fiskebäckskil. "BLAM" is his fifth solo exhibition at Lars Bohman Gallery since 1993. For more information, please contact the gallery.