What is Mats Åberg's art about? What does he tell us with his sculptures? My attempt to answer is that they are not "about" on anything and that he does not "tell" in the usual sense when discussing meaning and narration. I think it is simply that Mats is affected by certain sights that he tries to recapitulate, reconstruct, charge and shape. He sees a cat crawling under a gate or some people just sitting around a table or some nurses out to lunch who smoke after coffee. They are trivial scenes for most of us so commonplace that we are not even aware of them. But for Mats they possess an existential charge, they strikes a tone of tremendous importance, the answer to the riddle of our existence materialized for a thousandth of a second!
I think the reason to this approach to art and life to some extent can be explained by his long stays in Italy. There has he acquired a relationship to history as something totally non-linear. Time is nothing, new is old and old is new, eternity is in the moment and everything and everyone exist at once. He has daily contact with both Giotto and the nearest neighbour in Cerano. Life and art intermingle. It is just as important to capture the cat stretching in a sculpture, as it is to build a bridge ten times stronger to withstand the thick gnawing Finnish ice or cooking risotto in the most delicate way. Everything must be done as well as it can be done, neither art nor life can be rushed away.
It is perhaps an attitude that is not specifically attuned to the zeitgeist in which contemporary public consensus reigns. But I think Mats according to the above is beyond zeitgeists, he give a damn about it, while he is hamstrung by how a dog standing on a bridge reflected in water. "This scene is vital," Mats is thinking and tearing up the sketchbook!
Claes Jurander
Biography
Said about Mats
How I Work
