Through the nine paintings on display – all depictions of varied foods – the artist questions today’s image culture, and the triangular relationship between image, desire, and body. Molin is interested in our human bodies as a whole: how they react, how they are coerced and mislead by external stimuli.
The exhibition title, Bliss Point, is derived from the food industry: referring to the amount of salt, sugar or fat that optimizes palatability, while overriding the brain’s natural ‘stop’ signals. This type of manufactured pleasure has a deceiving, manipulative connotation – altering eating patterns and behaviours.
Images, particularly from various social media outlets, function in a similar way. One is constantly surrounded by all types of imagery, while various algorithms continuously feed targeted pictures or promotional material, to further hook the viewer. There is pleasure in this, but also a manipulation of our system on a collective level. It is the bliss point that one experiences daily, equally delicious and unhealthy. A shared experience, and at times a trauma, emerge.
Molin’s choice to illustrate the experience of being an individual on the internet today though food, in her own words, is entirely deliberate. The luscious, glossy depictions mimic our daily visual experience, particularly in the online realm: an overwhelming sensation of constantly being oversaturated. Her paintings portray such feelings through an abundance of forms, tightly fitted in the pictorial space. They are concomitantly attractive and grotesque.
Personal observations, derived from the artist’s own experiences of navigating online, inform the core of the practice. The endless amount of available images are employed to create a personal archive, from which those that will be used further are selected intuitively. As such, navigating the flood of surrounding images gains a renewed purpose. Molin’s overarching aim – much like the stylistic abilities of her medium of choice itself (oil on canvas) – is multifaceted: an act of resistance, a manner of regaining control of the narrative, an attempt to describe the complex experience of reality.
Malin Molin (b. 1989, Gothenburg, Sweden) lives and works in Stockholm. Molin holds an MFA from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2021) and a BFA from the Chelsea College of Art, London and the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2016). Molin has exhibited in group contexts in Sweden and Germany, and was the receipient of various awards and grants throughout her education, including Konstnärsnämndens ettåriga arbetsstipendium in 2022, and Konstakademiens stipendium för unga konstnärer in 2021.
