#non-figurative

Mattias Gunnarsson

studio work 2024-2025 Drawings, collages, colors

Fluid movement (originally: Folyadékmozgás) 2025 Ink and mica on paper

I don't do non-figurative art that frequently, but this time I had this mental image that I was inspired to solidify into a drawing, and it felt comforting to work on. I was thinking of many things, leaves and tentacles and bubbles and eyes and sea creatures, and the way that it looks when one stirs a pearlescent liquid, and the way that it looks when a halocline/thermocline is disturbed, and other things. Sometimes I need a picture I can hide in while I'm drawing it, and this was that picture.

It's quite unfortunate that the mica doesn't show up that well in scanning; it's a colour-shifting pink and blue. I insert a photograph of terrible quality, but it will let you see that it's shining.

So the latest update to iOS caused my wallpaper to crash. It has carried over somehow as my wallpaper when I last got a new phone and transferred all my apps and such - but NOT any of my photos (which is where the image I used for my wallpaper was stored). So I don’t really know how it managed to work for over a year before showing nothing but blackness but anyhow I had to search for some new wallpaper. I did a search on pintrest because my searches on google kept leading me to sites that wanted me to create accounts. And all of the results I was getting were abstract, minimalist, and/or geometric. Things like this:

or like this:

And then suddenly I halted my scrolling in shock as the topmost hamster image appeared among all the swooshes and tetxtures and raindrops and gradients - all completely non-figurative imagery. I leaned over to my friend who was sitting next to me and asked “Is this a cup?” and they said “Definitely. A two-handled cup.” and I was like “I thought there was another name for those. But people drink out of them?” and they were like “Yes” and so I am posting it here. The extreme aberration in my wallpaper searching. (I am not using it as wallpaper. For that I chose the following:)

Underland / Overland is a collection of drawings that all are a part of a collective narrative about existing and to be with a place. They explore what is sometimes hidden, beneath surfaces, in relation to what is visible.

It is ink and graphite, in several layers. I find it interesting with the surface and those that live, grow, inhabit and move between the underland and the overland. There is a movement (and an action) that perforates the surface and somehow dissolves the border that is the surface which makes new layers and levels possible. I often work non-figurative and explore lines, surfaces and textures with a fictional landscape with its own scale and structure. The images are both in a way their own and at the same time part of the collective story that moves in the in-between spaces, gets repeated, fade and reappear. The surface becomes a line and a world.

//Mattias

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Underland / Överland är en samling bilder som är del av en gemensam berättelse om att finnas och att vara med en plats. De undersöker och utforskar det som är till synes dolt, under ytor, i relation till det vi kan se.

Det är tusch och grafit, i flera lager.

Jag tycker att det är spännande med ytan och de / det som bor, växer, lever och rör sig mellan underlandet och överlandet. Det finns en rörelse (och en handling) som perforerar ytan och liksom löser upp den gräns som ytan utgör och flera lager och nivåer blir synliga. Jag jobbar sällan avbildande utan undersöker snarare linjer, ytor och texturer där landskapet är fiktivt med sin egen skala och struktur. Bilderna är både sig själv egna och samtidigt delar av den gemensamma berättelse som rör sig i mellanrummen, repeteras, försvinner och återuppstår. Ytan blir en linje och en värld.