The exhibition, his second at the gallery, is titled A brave new world and consists of a series of new paintings. Jörgen Melanton comments his show:
This will be a contemporary show from today's China seen through commercials and billboard signs posted in streets and public squares around China. There is a lot to say about the commercial language, it is after all related to kitsch and Hollywood movies. It conveys a dreamlike ideal world. (…) The commercial language can be compared to an act of seduction. When you are seduced by something, your seeing changes and becomes for a second veiled and less critical.
In 2007 he made a long journey to China and the exhibition is a direct result of that experience. But Melanton has not directly depicted the landscapes and the people he met, instead the he lets commercial posters become our windows into comtemporary China. The commercial language is just as seductive as treacherous and as a viewer one is struck by the strength of these images where the sunny, constantly smiling and beautiful, clinically clean China is portrayed. The title of the show comes from Aldous Huxley's futuristic novel with the same name, published in 1932. Huxley describes a future where the people are divided into classes and assigned their special tasks in society. The people are kept in place with indocrination and the drug soma, hence the lack of opposition against the strongly governed and antidemocratic society.
The criticism is obvious, but the paintings also speak clearly about Jörgen Melanton's respect for the human being and for her hopes and pursuits of a better future. The paintings are beautiful and melancholic, peaceful and strong. In spite of the commercial contemporanity the paintings takes the viewer back to past times. Melanton also creates with his painterly expression the feeling that the paintings are memories and dreams of something that have for always been lost. With his peculiar mix of realism and suggestive dreamlike-liness and Eastern pop art Melanton has created a show that floats, that is difficult to place in time and space and that forms its own world. The gallery has in conjunction with the exhibition published a catalogue with a text by Torkel Rasmusson.
From his childhood's comic-strip drawings Jörgen Melanton discovered pop art and later during his years at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm the clearly outlined paintings. For the wider audience Jörgen Melanton became mainly known for his large paintings "Sakernas kabinett" which in 1988 were placed in the subway station of Mariatorget, Stockholm. All sorts of objects shared the space on large screens which were perceived as wide shop windows. After several years of travelling in Asia, Central America and Northern Africa Jörgen Melanton painted labels, boxes and wrappings which he had found on the streets. These labels and boxes Jörgen Melanton has referred to as a kind of "Eastern pop art".
Jörgen Melanton was born in 1949 in Stockholm, where he lives and works. He received his artistic education at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design 1968-71 and at the Royal University College of Fine Arts 1971-76. Jörgen Melanton has had several solo shows and participated in many group exhibitions, among others TÄND MÖRKRET!, now at Millesgården, Stockholm. Jörgen Melanton is represented at Moderna Museet, Borås Konstmuseum and Malmö Konstmuseum.
This will be a contemporary show from today's China seen through commercials and billboard signs posted in streets and public squares around China. There is a lot to say about the commercial language, it is after all related to kitsch and Hollywood movies. It conveys a dreamlike ideal world. (…) The commercial language can be compared to an act of seduction. When you are seduced by something, your seeing changes and becomes for a second veiled and less critical.
In 2007 he made a long journey to China and the exhibition is a direct result of that experience. But Melanton has not directly depicted the landscapes and the people he met, instead the he lets commercial posters become our windows into comtemporary China. The commercial language is just as seductive as treacherous and as a viewer one is struck by the strength of these images where the sunny, constantly smiling and beautiful, clinically clean China is portrayed. The title of the show comes from Aldous Huxley's futuristic novel with the same name, published in 1932. Huxley describes a future where the people are divided into classes and assigned their special tasks in society. The people are kept in place with indocrination and the drug soma, hence the lack of opposition against the strongly governed and antidemocratic society.
The criticism is obvious, but the paintings also speak clearly about Jörgen Melanton's respect for the human being and for her hopes and pursuits of a better future. The paintings are beautiful and melancholic, peaceful and strong. In spite of the commercial contemporanity the paintings takes the viewer back to past times. Melanton also creates with his painterly expression the feeling that the paintings are memories and dreams of something that have for always been lost. With his peculiar mix of realism and suggestive dreamlike-liness and Eastern pop art Melanton has created a show that floats, that is difficult to place in time and space and that forms its own world. The gallery has in conjunction with the exhibition published a catalogue with a text by Torkel Rasmusson.
From his childhood's comic-strip drawings Jörgen Melanton discovered pop art and later during his years at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm the clearly outlined paintings. For the wider audience Jörgen Melanton became mainly known for his large paintings "Sakernas kabinett" which in 1988 were placed in the subway station of Mariatorget, Stockholm. All sorts of objects shared the space on large screens which were perceived as wide shop windows. After several years of travelling in Asia, Central America and Northern Africa Jörgen Melanton painted labels, boxes and wrappings which he had found on the streets. These labels and boxes Jörgen Melanton has referred to as a kind of "Eastern pop art".
Jörgen Melanton was born in 1949 in Stockholm, where he lives and works. He received his artistic education at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design 1968-71 and at the Royal University College of Fine Arts 1971-76. Jörgen Melanton has had several solo shows and participated in many group exhibitions, among others TÄND MÖRKRET!, now at Millesgården, Stockholm. Jörgen Melanton is represented at Moderna Museet, Borås Konstmuseum and Malmö Konstmuseum.