Ben Thompson & Maria Björklund have created an exhibition where the human life experience is summed up in visual form. At first glance, their respective imagery appears to be essentially different from each other. Ben Thompson’s worlds have an imaginary nature and an abstract outline. Maria Björklund explores the physical and mental state of the human being. But when the two worlds meet, unite and interact with each other, more similarities than differences are discovered. There is a painterly consonance and they rest on the same existential foundation. They reflect events, experiences and feelings from a time and place that once was.
For both Thompson and Björklund, trips they have taken, literature they have read and meetings they have had are sources of inspiration for creation. On the canvas, individual experiences are transcended into a universal state. Two artistry, two image worlds, unite in an existential and expressionistic vital painting.
Ben Thompson, born in Wallingford, England in 1963, is educated at Fine Arts Reading University, England 1983-1987. As a doctoral student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, he met Maria Björklund, who studied there. They later moved to Sweden together and made Österlen their base. Ben Thompson explores myths, symbols and archetypes in his image making. He is interested in landscapes. External and internal ones. In his paintings, the mirrored landscape, myths, stories and the self are intertwined. Through color fields, color overlays and fragments, intricate conceptual worlds are created.
Maria Björklund, born 1953 in Lund, is educated at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm 1983-86, 1988-89 and the Slade School of Fine Arts, London 1986-88. For Björklund, a painting grows, much like the life around it. As an artist, she acts as a membrane that transfers life to image. Her timeless paintings of sometimes strong, sometimes exposed people are fleeting fragments of a now that was.
“Everything is about a condensation and a concentration, a kind of crystallization of everything once alive, as enigmatic as the insect in the Amber.”
– Ruth Halldén
