alexander fredés shades of nature

a foggy guess

2012-01-22T23:12:00.001+01:00

…the fog erased the landscape

the light was just pale reflexions on the clouds,

brightening slightly the buildings and the leafless trees.

In a blur you could guess the tower of a church

as ghostly arrow pointing the sky.

white dust

2012-01-21T23:21:00.002+01:00

suddenly everything became shadowy,
a blurry white dust covered the roofs and the trees
and the landscape went brighter,
the shadows disappeared leaving a fog
that covered the city and the horizon.

lacrimosa

2011-12-26T17:23:00.004+01:00

Lacrimosa
Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.

Huic ergo parce, Deus
Pie Jesu Domine
Dona eis requiem,

Amen.

golden light

2011-12-12T20:07:00.000+01:00

light and leaves have almost disappeared

the naked twigs shiver under the north wind

the whole landscape becomes a scream

the light is leaving us

but not before saying farewell in golden clothes…

shades of light

2011-11-14T21:46:00.001+01:00

changes of light and weather
change the mood under the short autumn day light moments

to a stranger

2011-05-16T18:20:00.001+02:00

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you—your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass—you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you… (To a Stranger; Walt Whitman)

what are you thinking?

2011-05-15T17:30:00.003+02:00

I see you there,

thinking,
pulling your self into a deep contraction
attacked,
defeated,
alone and abandoned

I wonder why…
and shrive.
terrible feelings of despair
get into my head

traces of summer

2010-11-02T17:43:00.003+01:00

the day is gray,
the autumn has been blowing in for a while
carrying drops and colored leaves,

summer is gone
the trees are already preparing themselves
for the waiting season

raindrops and the imminent cold
had made the colors ran down
as tears
over the face of summer
over an evanescent picture
of clare calypso-waters

summer is gone...

time-worn stones

2010-10-24T16:20:00.002+02:00

Add caption

stones,

stone miles

there is history everywhere

the feeling of labour, fatigue, tiredness, languishment

too many arms needed to lay the stones down

too many feet leaving traces and markings

too many people leaving for distant landscapes

people coming back from the end of the world

from battles

from families

from estrange beliefs

I see in my imagination slaves,

workers,

soldiers

horses,

carriages,

arms,

war

domination

subjugation

liberation

the sun shines hard on these sliced stones

polished by time, rounded, dark

making them alive,

vibrant

suffocating

time-worn stones

destiny

2010-07-02T08:05:00.001+02:00

churches everywhere,

hundred of crosses,

different interpretations of Christ.

a suffering man,

an agonized man,

a bleeding man,

crucified,

starved,

tired,

overwhelmed.

a male body is emerging off the bronze door,

he seems like being created or vanishing,

melting back in the metal,

floating and at the same time,

trapped in a thick and heavy magma

a cross is embossed on his chest.

his body hasn't neither feet nor hands

he is not crucified

he has a cross as a stigma deep carved on him,

soaring and dividing his chest

sealing, marking, wounding him

and leaving his body for ever

as a reminder, a gesture of passion.

(pictures: the door of the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs
in Rome, created by Igor Mitoraj in 2006)

reminder

2010-07-01T10:51:00.001+02:00

Rome was dumped and hot that summer afternoon.
I decided anyway to go to the famous graveyard called "Cimitero del Verano" and take some pictures of the sculptures that symbolized dead and sorrow and the most frightened feeling of the human race,
the unknown.

Strong shadows fall almost as sharp knives creating a landscape that reminded me nightmares from my childhood when the sense of dead seemed to be most remote but always culturally present.

Now,
confronting my self with these images at my age resulted in another kind of feeling,
it becomes most present,
something that it would happen not to far away.

I wasn't afraid
but sadness, heaviness and displeasure invaded me
and I felt tired.

(the pictures where taken at Cimitero del Verano, Rome, with an iPhone)

street-art in Rome

2010-06-23T18:33:00.002+02:00

It was the time when still the great exhibition of Caravaggio's paintings were on, at "Le Scuderie del Quirinale" when I found this beautiful piece of painting on the sidewalk of one of the most busiest streets of Rome.

Made with crayons on the rough surface of the arid sidewalk the delicate faces reminded me baroque art.

MAXXI—the museum of modern arts of the 21st century, Rome

2010-06-07T16:12:00.001+02:00

It's a fantastic building!

Designed by Zaha Hadid gives a beautiful frame to the contemporary art. I don't know if the exhibition that has been curated for the opening is as important or good as the building itself but in any case it's worth a journey to Rome.

/ʃ'eɪd/

2010-05-14T21:41:00.003+02:00

different shades,

different feelings,

different approaches,

different message.

grafitti

2010-05-12T21:27:00.000+02:00

pretty good sources of inspiration
I like the idea of painting or writing on walls
it gets another perspective to what you are doing
and it has been done since before history (i e Altamira's)

/daɪv'ɜːʳsɪti/

2010-05-12T14:53:00.001+02:00

variety,

multiplicity,

dissimilarity,

difference.

(picture taken in London in 1994, the task, to show the ethnic diversity of the city)

inner joy

2010-05-11T22:44:00.001+02:00

Joy is a feeling of great happiness.
A joy is something or someone that makes you feel happy or gives you great pleasure.

an image

2010-04-30T23:02:00.000+02:00

simple + lines + curves + nature + time

fading, gradually becoming paler
as sunlight taking away the brightness
as the time that fade away life
slowly less clear until it disappears...

colored graphics

2010-04-16T18:41:00.003+02:00

what do you think when you create images or illustrations?

I started these two illustrations based on a photo-session I did last year with an extraordinary model that has given me inspiration for many different kind of art-work

I created the original pictures just as a source for further use, for feeling me free to create what ever I wanted. I picked a couple of pictures and I thought fashion, strong colors, communication and feelings.

the technique is digital but I never discard the possibility of using physical colors, mixed media, collage.

remembering the winter

2010-03-26T12:40:00.003+01:00

a simple glorious winter in Stockholm

a white shade covering shapes and textures

to just suspecting a sleeping nature

waiting, dreaming, breathing

but slowly

soundless

and cold

traces of winter

2010-02-15T16:47:00.004+01:00

a long and cold winter in Stockholm has left its traces everywhere in different shapes creating ice sculptures everywhere

capturing a frozen nature

2010-01-27T20:32:00.010+01:00

a foggy early morning had dressed the naked trees and the rest of the autumn with tiny glittering snowflakes transforming nature in a collection of patterns.

twigs, forgotten leaves, a stair, a fence.

everything changes shapes. it's a landscape in black and white where forms are as simple as geometry or sometimes, as music notes on a white sheet.

i took the pictures and then played with the forms to find patterns underneath.

sources of inspiration

2010-01-11T23:14:00.007+01:00

inspiration!

we were talking about that

and we said that there is not any true way to find it
neither, is there a place to go to to get inspiration.

we do sometimes have a spa where we feel like it's easier

to communicate with deepest thoughts—but there is always the possibility that there nothing happens.

i find inspiration and images mostly without seeking
the sources of it just happen to be there,

around the corner,

when walking,

talking,

running fast to get the bus or just

in your way to the gym on a cold, icy winter day.

it was then, when I was steering at the side walk to sort out the the ice spots trying not to slip down, when i saw something black on a concave white board and i have to go back to check what it was.

i couldn't realize what the things were

(the rest of a Christmas decoration?)

but the garbage reminded me a sculpture, something i saw in Venice's Biennial years ago—or was at Louisiana?

however i grab my iPhone and took a picture of the "sculpture" to be able to see what i could do with it—an illustration, part of a book on textures, things we don't see and so on.

then,

the source of inspiration was found on the sidewalk among assorted garbage,

rests of Christmas decoration,

quite unexpected...

you just have to open your eyes and discover... see...

a frozen second

2010-01-11T13:00:00.002+01:00

I never wanted to be my self.
Not even at the early years I accepted the person I was at that moment.
The memories that I have, tell me noting about being happy or having lust for anything.
Not even hope.
I never thought about having a future or how this future would be.
Everything was more like a frozen second of life,
the detention of the living moment,
nihilism.

I'm pretty aware that we live is a timeline that it's not connected with other moments other than with a memory and the capacity of making connections between those tiny images of life.

Since I have never accepted the facts of being my self, I have passed through this chain of dissolving moments
waiting for nothing,
forcing my self to have hope
even when I know that the hope I have is just an invention
an image put together with pieces of nothing
a chain of frozen seconds without connection ...

dreamlike

2009-12-09T11:20:00.006+01:00

a walk in the late autumn light in the afternoon
weather is bad, cold and damp
suddenly by the time the sunset starts
a beautiful golden light illuminate some tops of the skyline
becoming a beautiful combination of black and white
with a touch of bright colors
like in a scene or a dream...

tenderness

2009-08-27T14:19:00.002+02:00

... and then, I couldn't stop thinking about a picture I had done a couple of years ago that was aimed to show the feeling of belonging and tenderness that sometimes if we are lucky enough, can experience.

... to get the feeling of hearing the rhythm of the one who we love, breathing and see the beautiful expression of a face when sleeping peacefully in our arms and contemplate the closed eyelids slightly slightly moving, seeing hopefully, wonderful landscapes, multiple shades of colours, moonbeams touching the surface of the water or the first rays of light on a cold morning day

... feeling the warmth that's coming from two embraced naked bodies and all your senses getting fulfilled with a perfect connection that hardly can be expressed neither in words or shapes ... you see your self, shivering of pleasure and you wish that you were a poet to be able to translate into words what you just have felt.

[picture: the Cullbergsballet dancing a piece of "position of elsewhere" 22/8/09 at Vitabergsparken in Stockholm]

a casa

2009-08-07T14:41:00.003+02:00

I'm listening the tones of an enchanted aria of Puccini's 'Madama Butterfly' and not because of the words (which are really sad) but because of the beauty of the italian language that I'm thinking of my last stay in Rome.

I have been editing the pictures I captured there and trying to feel again the pulse of the city. The colors of the earth and the nature that come together in an explosion of shades that make you feel alive and inexplicable glad. A joy of being alive that I seldom manage to find somewhere else and less, to feel it in my self.

I was lucky to be placed at Trastevere, between the small streets, fountains, churches, restaurants, bars and people! This is the key to understand why you get those feelings: people. They are sitting by a bar, enjoying a coffee, a 'pasta', food and each other and that's the secret.

Pictures and pictures of some of the places I was to,
and then a simple one that shows just a door.
an old one, quite anonymous, Via del Moro 41-42 in Trastevere,
the entrance to the house i stayed in when I was in Rome
—a casa (at home)

l'umiltà è una virtù

2009-07-28T10:47:00.004+02:00

umiltà
s.f.
1 humility, humbleness: l'umiltà è una virtù humility is a virtue; pregare Dio con tutta umiltà to beg God with all humility, to pray God with all humility.
2 (qualità di ciò che è umile) humbleness, modesty, unpretentiousness: l'umiltà di una casa the unpretentiousness of a house; umiltà di origini humbleness of birth, low birth, modest origins.
3 (sottomissione) humility, submissiveness.
(dizionario di inglese, corriere della sera; http://dizionari.corriere.it/dizionario_inglese/Italiano)

well, just in Rome
I took the picture two weeks ago, my friend and I found this magnificent car, a Lamborghini, parked on "humility road" as you can read on the sign on the wall :-)

the maker makes

2009-04-29T09:22:00.001+02:00

One more chain I break
To get me closer to you
One more chain does the maker make
To keep me from bustin' through

One more notch I scratch
To keep me thinkin' of you

One more notch does the maker make
Upon my face so blue

Get along, little doggies
Get along, little doggies

One more smile I fake
And try my best to be glad
One more smile does the maker make
Because he knows I'm sad

Oh Lord, how I know
Oh Lord, how I see
That only can the maker make
A happy man of me

Get along little doggies
Get along little doggies
Get along

more than I would like to but I do remember you a lot.

rufus wainwright singing

life is a journey

2009-04-17T11:43:00.003+02:00

life is a journey
(the by line of samsonite as the picture above)
after a couple a years living in the worst chaos ever in my life and this time totally alone I came to trust life again and everything seemed to fall in place and even when the expectations weren't the best the hope had come back.
life was quite good until everything started to fall apart ... again

you never think about the world wide economy but after the last fall of the stock market in the States reality has become suddenly not just something you see on CNN but a notice that remind you the thin line between being an active professional and a man in between jobs.

and not just that, but the whole picture, changes.
the journey has been given a new direction and at the same time it has stopped the time because it will mean that I'll be forced to stay in a place where I do not belong and, neither I know anyone for almost three more months!

as I said when talking to a friend, I have been in deeper shit in my life than now and somehow I have managed to turn the direction on, even when it has costed me pretty much strength and tears.

thin

2009-04-04T10:28:00.003+02:00

tiny
fragile
brittle
frail
negligible
disappearing

as life itself.

bruno munari

2009-03-26T10:57:00.005+01:00

conservare lo spirito dell’infanzia
 dentro di sé per tutta la vita 
vuol dire conservare 
la curiosità di conoscere
 il piacere di capire
 la voglia di comunicare.

preserve the spirit of the youth
inside you all your life,
i want to say,
preserve the curiosity of knowing
the joy of understanding
and the will of communicate

"when i walk" (musetta's waltz)

2009-03-15T07:59:00.011+01:00

Quando me'n vò soletta per la via, 
La gente sosta e mira 
E la bellezza mia tutta ricerca in me, 
ricerca in me Da capo a pie' ... 
Ed assaporo allor la bramosia sottil che da
gl'occhi traspira e dai palesi vezzi intender sa 
Alle occulte beltà. 
Cosi l’effluvio del desio tutta m'aggira, 
felice mi fa, felice me fa! 
E tu che sai, che memori e ti struggi 
Da me tanto rifuggi? 
So ben: le angoscie tue non le vuoi dir, 
non le vuoi dir so ben 
Ma ti senti morir!
When I walk alone in the street
People stop and stare at me
And everyone looks at my beauty,
Looks at me,
From head to foot...
And then I relish the sly yearning
which escapes from their eyes
and which is able to perceive
my most hidden beauties.
Thus the scent of desire is all around me,
and it makes me happy, makes me happy!
And you who know, who remember and yearn
you shrink from me?
I know it very well:
you do not want to express your anguish,
I know so well that you do not want to express it
but you feel as if you are dying!

it's not just the music and the scene that attract me,
it's more than that.
It reminds me an encapsulated time of my life
and the last couples of decades in a pursue of self-confidence.
the text (and the music) shows what it is a characteristic
of the personality of a person that i think everyone has and feel;
the need of feeling that you are attractive,
that you can feel the "scent of desire..all around you" as Musetta sings,
because that means that you are alive and living life,
not just passing by,
not just waiting for something to happen,
just living.

at last!

2009-03-06T23:12:00.007+01:00

that was the last dance,
I knew it from the very moment you just were by my door
and not being sure wether to get in or not.
you had become in two weeks time an estrange

you didn't belong here anymore
an odd moment
you were talking to me but not being there
a ghost already

i got a text from you at my birthday
i didn't get any feelings at all
i just sent a 'thanks' back and i know now that,
that time is over
free at last!

photo: skånes dansteater, vitabergsparken, 2008

i e truth

2009-03-06T22:45:00.000+01:00

i didn't come here to hear the truth,
please lye to me for once.

in the middle of nowhere

2009-02-05T21:58:00.002+01:00

and i was on the road again once more,
starting a new life in a new place and with not that much with me
the new apartment was nice but empty

i just had to go to Ikea to buy a carpet to cover the naked floor
i just can't stand being in a desert place specially when
the place is in a town in the middle of nowhere.

on the other hand i can't either be anywhere and let the things be as they are
i just have to make changes and try to create some sort of harmony and a sense of design
therefore, i took one of the few things i had with me
a chair, a lamp, a flash light my portfolio bag and a case whit CD:s
and arranged a sort of installation that makes me fell like i belong here

what society has decided

2008-12-15T20:04:00.003+01:00

why?

2008-12-13T13:26:00.004+01:00

why are you so afraid of death?

the only thing that can be lost, is life

but then (if you do), you are not going to be alive

to notice it...

to think of

2008-12-01T23:46:00.020+01:00

Job 3
20 Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul,
21 to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure,
22 who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave?

23 [Why is light given] to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?
24 For sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water

25 What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.
26 I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.

Job 38
16 Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been shown to you?
18 What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside?
19 Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?

Tell me, if you know all this.

photographing joakim

2008-11-23T19:19:00.006+01:00

joakim is one of those people that you connect with
without much effort
he is just there being himself
and in his own thoughts
letting you to create with the camera
and capture the beauty of the moment.

a mask

2008-11-23T18:07:00.002+01:00

... and the sense of connection just disappeared
the gray mask started dragging away from your face
and small wounds crawled up revealing
an unreal and pale expression

your face is still beautiful
so, are your eyes,
but there is a sort of pain
behind your look, something that you are
deeply into,
your mind isn’t here
I can’t feel your presence
though, I sense you
and I know that your thoughts
aren’t for me to be known.

irena

2008-11-22T20:52:00.006+01:00

"a hanging-artist"
(I photographed Irena last september)

have you?

2008-11-19T19:48:00.005+01:00

have you guessed you yourself would not continue?
have you dreaded those earth-beetles?
have you feared the future would be nothing to you?
is today nothing?
is the beginningless past nothing?
if the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing.
[walt whitman]

an actor to be

2008-11-19T19:27:00.009+01:00

this young man is from Norway and studying drama at a school in Stockholm. I made these pictures for his book.

photographing Caroline

2008-11-17T20:30:00.007+01:00

she is a dancer and she asked me to do some portraits and I thought that the most proper way to portrait her was while dancing ... then, she danced for me..

these boots are made for walkin'

2008-11-14T22:20:00.014+01:00

... and I was young and the gogo-girls were dancing

wearing mini-skirts and too much hair spray

because the hair was supposed to be and

stay perfect while you were dancing doing those small

steps or jumps, like cartoons' figures...

I like the strong colors of the video,

they are as they were hand-painted, with a plastic look,

really stiff and simple.

The movements or choreography,

have become an icon specially after the dance of

John Travolta in "pulp fiction" movie.

The colors make me think of the ones of the stage designs from the Bauhaus.

waiting for the fall

2008-09-04T22:13:00.005+02:00

the colors of nature are changing rapidly
the summer is vanishing from the tops of the trees
and so the sun is going south

I took a walk to see if I still could find some
expressions of warmth and living nature
but what I founded was merely reminds of
what it had been

everything prepared for the long rest,
for the long time ahead with short and cold days
and long nights when you are pretty much
inside your self and waiting for the
light to come back...

a sign

2008-08-10T18:54:00.002+02:00

Suddenly came today to my thoughts a sign that it was in my room in London while I was studying there. I rented this room from a girl from South Africa while she was on vacations abroad so I had her furniture and everything she had carried from home. between them, she had this sign that attracted my curiosity because it wasn’t just sweet in its naivety but, it told much more than that. It had a kind of warmth and something we all need everyday, a feeling of being part of a community and the necessity of being recognize and acknowledged—the childish figures show what you get when you have a kind gesture.
I felt welcome and home in that room in a house with people coming from different countries and environments, with nothing more in common but the fact that we were design students at the same college.

the sign was made by South African school children, back in the late -80s

no!

2008-08-04T22:26:00.006+02:00

and when I saw your face with staring eyes
and drops of sweat running down your forehead
I understood that you were about to tell me something
that I wouldn’t like, that it would change my life
and state of mind for a long time

I didn’t want to see you there
I didn’t want to hear what you have done
what you have to say or what you have to explain
there was nothing to explain anymore

And the only thing that I regretted was, that I believed in you
And that I gave you my love and my self, in a way
so, please, not excuses, not tears, not apologizes
I’ll probably be able to forget but not to forgive...

(photo: from a performance of göteborgsoperan ballet
at vitabergsparken, stockholm, august 3, 2008)

when it's cold outside...

2008-07-26T23:16:00.006+02:00

... and you said that you were thinking of me when you bought these "thermopads", because they would keep my (usually cold) hands warm, when you weren't here to warm them up. sweet!

"Che gelida manina,
se la lasci riscaldar.
Cercar che giova?
Al buio non si trova."

[la bohème, puccini]

sphere

2008-07-23T21:07:00.006+02:00

... shiny, in different sizes building a track along the promenade by the sea in Helsinki.

I thought, it was a nice way to photograph my friend and I reflected on the shine metallic surface of the sphere.

signs grove

2008-07-20T10:06:00.006+02:00

like many other things, as soon as you take them off theirs context, become something else. they tell you some other stories, wake your fantasy up. they can even become a work of art as for instance, Duchamp's "ready-made"

["The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. " m. duchamp]

i found these signs by the sea in Helsinki.

a chair

2008-07-18T18:33:00.007+02:00

... it reminded me a cathedral,
probably a little bit clumsy, but it had the attraction of a thing that wakes your fantasy up.
It's more than a chair that you can actually sit on, well your kids...I had to take a picture of it because it was for me an example of art expressed through a recognizably shape but not for being used.
(seeing at kiasma's restaurant in helsinki)

the ability to think in a different way

2008-07-15T10:20:00.009+02:00

I've just heard this line while seeing a film and I
think that this is what a designer have to have in order

to create new things, to get further limits and trends.
because as soon as trends become recognized and
everybody follows them, they are on their way out,

they have become old.

in order to be capable to create things that last longer, you need to
put your self outside the boundaries and work crossover disciplines,
because the design principles are the same independent on

what you are designing.

the greatest thing you can create is the one that can be
perceived as timeless and therefore always contemporary.

(photo: kalle åkesson, 1994. a ceramic bowl with printed
pattern: botvid & fredés)

looking at kiasma

2008-07-11T12:27:00.020+02:00

[the term chiasma comes from the Greek χίασμα, which is related to the Greek letter Χ and means "crossing"]

finish design in the lavatory

oil painting by sami lukkarinen
(kiasma—the museum for contemporary art in helsinki)
some of my impressions...july 11, 2008
"beauty is on its way back into contemporary art." milla unkila.

spectator

2008-07-03T13:20:00.003+02:00

I was checking the older pictures I have done the last 18 years and i found one from 1993 when I was studying in Copenhagen and we didn't have the same access to computers as now. I worked then pretty much with layered images partially made with a computer and then printed out on transparent papers. I took photographs of my drawings and paintings and then worked by hand, each layer to get the effect of transparency and the special feeling of blur and vanish.

I was mostly trying to put on paper the feeling of being an outsider and a foreigner, what ever I went and was. The feeling of not-belonging nowhere and just being an spectator while life's passing by.

how does it look?

2008-07-03T11:35:00.004+02:00

I have been working with images for an exhibition that only exists in the digital world and in my imagination for quite a while till now. I think images and forms and colors almost every minute of the day and despite of my moods, the images I create become calm and quite. They have the beauty of a non-existing G-force. But, once again, I had everything digital and I needed to see if they work on canvas or paper and on a wall;
here you see the result.

fantasies of clay

2008-06-19T16:53:00.004+02:00

And I answered that I’m not living but surviving and, that I don’t like it because is nonsense. You told me that, since the summer is already here and everything goes idle in this country, that things are naturally how they are, but as soon as the holidays are gone, things will change for the better.

Well, I just said, the last three years I have been trying to find explanations, candy reasons to convince my self that “after all, tomorrow is another day” but things haven’t change at all, on the contrary they just have become worst and since time goes, I’m running nearer to a dead end. I’m in a suspended time with nowhere to go and I know for the facts that this is really the end.

You ask me if I haven’t think about the fact that almost everyone is just surviving ...well it can be true, of course, but, do I have to accept it? Do I have to continue like this? Is there a necessity in my case? I do not have any hope. I do not have future and nobody who will suffer if I disappear, so the answer is not what to do but, when.

shades of life

2008-06-17T15:25:00.004+02:00

I remember standing there by the window early in the morning and just looking down. Everything seemed static, like wen you are in an insulated room; not any sound from outside, just the sounds coming from your inside
—your breathing, your pulse, and you are looking at an empty stage. The distance to the ground made the few people crossing the plaza, tiny little unknown shapes going somewhere. I felt the emptiness of a paused time. I knew that in a moment I’d go down to the streets and work with my camera and even when the silence will be gone and replaced with the noise of a busy city I'll be there behind and hidden by the camera lens not taken part of that life, just watching. I couldn’t move from the window, I couldn’t leave either the feeling of emptiness or not-belonging. I was there but it was just my body that had trapped me and didn’t let me free. Those shades and brittle structures down there, attracted me, invited me to be part of the nothingness...after some years that landscape disappeared, but not with me...

(photo: the plaza between the twin towers,
from my hotel room, new york, 1998)

counting down

2008-06-14T22:55:00.003+02:00

The days are gone ...
(That’s what the first thought I had this morning)
The feeling of emptiness had gotten slowly into my heart again.

It is like veils of rain in a summer sunset
Beautiful to see but, you know that they will remind you,
sadness and loneliness.

They won’t become storm,
(They are almost like signs of joy: nature taking care of its garden)
But, they will carry to your mind those moments
When you have been just about of touching joy
But, never, never get there.

The days are gone and what reminds of them
it’s just empty images of what they could have been but weren’t.
Like many pieces of an uncompleted jigsaw
that will never fit together.

I can’t see new days coming.
I can’t see the colors of the rainbow.
Or the sunbeams coming through an open window.

The doors and windows are already closed
—I have lost the key to open them.

cinderella's shoe?

2008-05-26T13:20:00.005+02:00

I told you how exiting is to fantasize when you are walking somewhere and you find unexpected things or things that don't belong there. Well, I was this morning on my way home from an early meeting and decided to walk instead of riding my bike when i suddenly saw this high heel lady shoe (I know that you're thinking know that it could be a transsexual's but i doubted because of the size, in sweden drag-queens are extremely tall, ordinary above 185 cm and with 46+ shoe size) and I started to build stories about how this could happen. The shoe wasn't old and today is monday and it seemed like someone had found and hanged it there to be found. But how can you just drop a shoe? Was it because the clock was announced the midnight? Well, hardly, those things don't happened anymore and never in Sweden. On the other hand, we live in a kingdom and there are a couple of princes ... uhm, too much of a fantasy. It was probably just a lady who had too much fun and was running to pick up a taxi home and the shoes were much too tight for having them on ... or, nicer to think that in the heat of the night she was having fun and dropping what she was wearing and just kept a drop of Chanel 5...

a glimpse of life

2008-04-15T14:28:00.003+02:00

the sun shining palely at noon on a early spring day
i walk trying to see some signs of new life crawling up through
the died leaves fallen from still nude trees.
some tiny blue flower dare to look directly to the sun
but they tremble with the cold breeze from north
the new season is not yet here but a feeling of
a new life and hope is there growing from dirt
and a yellow shine makes me smile ...

2.ooo8?

2008-02-25T18:24:00.003+01:00

just a thought

february sunrise

2008-02-19T21:21:00.002+01:00

Through my window this morning
so beautiful and quite though with traffic.

missing the colors of the spring

2008-02-14T17:55:00.009+01:00

happy valentine's day

2008-02-14T17:43:00.001+01:00

andy warhol in stockholm

2008-02-09T20:49:00.000+01:00

what a nice surprise to see this show at Moderna Museet
It is unusual to find something like this, that is more an experience than an ordinary exhibition. You can tell that you are going to come back to see it many times because they have designed the space in a manner that you feel like you are back in the –60’s and understand where everything that you see now comes from.

i'll be your mirror

2008-02-08T13:10:00.000+01:00

I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don't know
I'll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you're home

When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you're twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
'Cause I see you

I find it hard to believe you don't know
The beauty you are
But if you don't let me be your eyes
A hand in your darkness, so you won't be afraid

When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you're twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
'Cause I see you

I'll be your mirror
(reflect what you are)

Velvet Underground/Lyrics by Clem Snide
* click the title to listen

valentine's?

2008-02-05T16:15:00.000+01:00

these cold and lonely nights,
I feel the wind touching my senses
and at that moment,
I think of you by my side loving me.

A sublime feeling that goes over differences and problems,
that resists time and gets stronger with distance,
(Love) can't be denied and neither abandoned

If everything that exists in this world
possesses a source of energy,
mine, would be you.

(Luciano de Jesús e Souza)

amanhã

2008-02-04T12:14:00.000+01:00

Amanhã será um lindo dia,
Da mais louca alegria se possa imaginar
Amanhã. Redobra a força pra cima,
Que não cessa há de vingar
Amanhã mais nenhum mistério,
Acima do ilusório o astro vai brilhar
Amanhã a luminosidade alheia a qualquer vontade,
Há de imperar, há de se imperar
Amanhã está toda esperança,
Por menor que pareça, existe e é pra vicejar
Amanhã, a pesar de hoje,
Ser a estrada que surge pra si trilhar
Amanhã mesmo que uns não queiram,
Será de outros que esperam pelo dia maior
Amanhã ódios aplacados, terrores abrandados,
Será pleno, será pleno
(Guilherme Arantes / Caetano Veloso )

more saatchi

2008-02-03T11:51:00.001+01:00

I have been working with my images for SAATCHI online a couple of months now. I don't know how effective is to have your artwork there but since we artists need to be seen you have to use every possibility you get independent on how tiny it could be.
If you are not loud you never will be heard.

lets have a coffee

2008-02-01T08:25:00.000+01:00

well i would like to have one with you.
we never had the time to visit magasin3
when you were here.
I had a caffè doppio there
and I thought of you of course.

...i. e. truth

2008-01-31T18:02:00.000+01:00

it is neither technique nor the instrument you use
that makes a work of art become ART.
(picture: the coffee shop's wall at MAGASIN 3, Stockholm)

photographing lars-erik

2008-01-30T09:43:00.000+01:00

what's important to you?
(you asked)
...just feel the presence
of that friendly gestalt.

That means a lot to me
independent on the details,
colors or shapes.
I just want to capture an image
... a timeless image.

patterns—casa cor in stockholm

2008-01-24T21:21:00.001+01:00

interior design
innovation—I just heard that innovation
is individual and never a company's.
I think that's right, a group tends to
be conservativ and avoid risks and
therefore never innovates.

inspiration?

2008-01-24T13:35:00.000+01:00

The digital forms and expressions
inspire my present artwork.
I become inspired of what ever happen to me
—a conversation, a meeting with a person,
a relationship, the media in general,
a city, an exhibition, everything.
I have an insatiable curiosity that makes me
think pictures everywhere I go or am.
If I have my camera with me, I would take a picture,
if not, I would write my thoughts down
and sketch what I would do next.
What I would use as material/media for expressing my self
is less important.
The important thing is that I need to express an idea
and that I want other to see it and hopefully,
get in touch with and related to what—the artwork I have done,
has to tell them.
I want to communicate.

sources of inspiration

2008-01-22T23:15:00.000+01:00

forms
colors
to learn to see behind the surface
how the parts interact with each other
to find the most simple structure
that put them together,
where they find their place
and signification.
I think of that when I design
I want to go to the main source,
to the basics, to the start point ...

... a smile in the morning

2008-01-19T11:37:00.000+01:00

I found a letter from you this morning
when I opened the mailbox,
and I smiled
I felt happy
because your letter reminded me
nice and wonderful moments
and a perfect and short parenthesis of joy.

I found this picture of tulips
that I had by the kitchen’s window
that express the joy I felt when I read you letter

photographing "street" with juliana

2008-01-17T15:27:00.000+01:00

Juliana called me to ask me if I could go with her and take pictures to an event at STREET a place with restaurants and coffee-shops by the water in Stockholm (Södermalm). It was so nice!
We had dinner, got a lot of drinks and we took pictures of the catwalk.
It was the first time I photographed a catwalk: I understood the Japanese with theirs cameras running around europe. If I hadn't had a camera the show had just disappeared in a wink—they don't walk they run, so it was a cat-run (really).

pages from the past

2008-01-17T14:19:00.000+01:00

Many years ago i started drawing where ever i went to instead of using my camera. The camera made me in a way stay outside reality. I was behind the lenses watching the life passing by and I was absent.
With my pencils, water colors and my pen i was able to feel the atmosphere, the forms, the shades of nature in another way.
When I now go back to those diary-books I'm able to recall the feelings of that moments in a more human way. The sketches are not a perfect reflection of a place or people but my own perception of a moment.

my home

2008-01-13T11:07:00.000+01:00

I woke up this morning with this song in my mind—probably because i was talking about the pictures I took of my apartment yesterday.
Sun is shining this morning and the room is very bright not quite cozy as in the song but nice.

"I'll light the fire
You place the flowers in the vase
That you bought today
Staring at the fire
For hours and hours
While I listen to you play your love songs
All night long for me
Only for me

/ C Cmaj7 / Am C / F C F - / 1st, 2nd / F C F G /
/ F G C C/B / Am C F Ab /

Come to me now
And rest your head for just five minutes
Everything is done
Such a cozy room
The windows are illuminated
By the evening sunshine through them
Fiery gems for you
Only for you

{Refrain}
Our house, is a very, very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy 'cause of you

/ C C/B Am C / F C / / F C F (G) /"

(Lyrics and cords: Graham Nash)

photographing a dancer

2008-01-11T21:17:00.000+01:00

...the task was to get as many pictures i could take in order to have material for my artistry. I have since a while, had in mind the words floating and flying and that was I told my model. I needed him to translate the words in movements that I could catch with my camera and then, aloud the images to tell me what they mean in order to go deeper in my own mind to se them as an artwork. I like the forms to talk to me, that start the process of creation both in form, colors and words, like the ones I wrote for one of the images:

i felt like flying again,
like living in a joyful weightless state
my mind, gone to another world
where there is nothing more
than
you and i

much ado about nothing...

2008-01-09T11:51:00.000+01:00

I went once to downtown before Christmas
I wouldn't do any Christmas' shopping
so i walked around like in a bubble, but I saw
and felt the stress of the people trying
to get things for people they knew and probably,
to many, that they not even feel like given a present to,
but, don't you always do things not because you feel like it
but because life is compromising all the time?
The rush for catching an idea or a moment that
supposed to be like an image on a card:
The image of happiness?
I went the day before yesterday back to down town
and the people I saw, had a different pace,
a different expression on theirs faces
and the shop-windows are now almost empty,
only one thing remains: the word SALE
in different languages of course,
after all we are in Europe.

a card from hungary

2008-01-04T07:55:00.000+01:00

(lovely to get a card like this, thanks Itsván)

1. use public transportation more often (why not a bike?)
2. skydive (if you close your eyes so...)
3. take quite walks on the beach (love it!)
4. body build (please don't become a square though)
5. become some sort of activist (against bad weather?)
6. get voted off a reality show (shouldn't be nice?)
7. get a physical (sounds like I'd need to look into the mirror)
8. just be a happy nut!
9. volunteer more
10. bungee jump (be aware not to eat before that please)

milan, a year ago

2008-01-02T20:24:00.001+01:00

Dino and I, were almost a year ago walking around Milan,
he was trying to show me some spots of this city to make me understand that there were something to see in this city that is way too unattractive. I don't really understand why I think so because I love Italy.

I found this picture that I took there in a beautiful sunny winter day.
The sculpture (Igor Mitoraj) is JUST there,
around the corner in a little piazza! Beautiful. So, as in the rest of Italy, you'll find something extraordinary even in Milan.

the first day of 2008

2008-01-01T15:56:00.000+01:00

You can’t keep this going
You have to let it go…
That’s what I thought when your
text-message came soon after the midnight
and when the new year was already here
Not only you, but also everything that
had happened after you changed our lives
I asked my self, what it is this what I have to let go?

I did change things the last months
I did leave everything that I couldn't keep
in order to be my self again
And just my self—In order to
start a new year without
any hope or promises

What I have been doing the last time
is to let my history goes
To let go my feelings for people I once used to love
Or that I still love but,
that I have trite the traces
they left behind as much as I could

First the colors, then everything physical
and at last, the pictures
Why keeping things when you won’t be able
to take them with you when you leave, said mother
And she was right

I came to my friend's house
(on the picture above)
to celebrate the New Year
that would in some hours be here,
to be with my friends
to say good-bye ...
and let it go

31/12/07

2007-12-31T00:49:00.000+01:00

... and that was the last day
of a year that started with tears
and a sense of hopelessly

a year like a parenthesis
a life with not life in between
just surviving, waiting

with more than tears, more disappointments
more attacks against hope
against horizons, beliefs, necessity
necessity of joy and significance

just a time in between …

experimenting for saatchi

2007-12-29T20:47:00.000+01:00

...and I wonder,
what's he doing?
is he dancing against the wall?
is he seeing things that I don't?
I leave the thoughts and make images
how will they become?
I don't know yet ... I'm lost

dear christopher,

2007-12-28T10:06:00.000+01:00

It was very nice to hear that you got my
Christmas’ card.

I took the picture in Berlin, last time I was there.
Is the interior of the famous Kaiser Willhelm Church
or better, the new construction after WW2
“the new octagonal church,
—the interior with its atmosphere of peace
and meditation and the intense blue light falling
through the honeycomb of concrete windows"...
is an extraordinary experience.

The first thing I do when I’m in Berlin is to go to this church
and I sit there in silence and just feel the ‘presence’
of the blue colors and the golden light of the
sculpture of Christ floating on this blue light..

christmas' eve

2007-12-26T08:55:00.000+01:00

One step through the doors and I was in another world
Just candle lights and the voice of three Byzantine monks
singing in accords with deep voices.
I found a place where to sit and I closed my eyes
and the time went back to what we think
the 18th century was in a church in Russia.

It was Christmas’ Eve and the midnight mass.
People waiting, whispering—hardly noticing
the beautiful Gregorian’s chants.
I think that they didn’t know that priest had change the
program and this year wouldn’t become as the year before.
Then, half eleven pm the bells started ringing and the mass began.
The lectures combined with psalms sang by a choir
that enhanced the feeling of togetherness.
I thought of the people I love who weren’t there
sharing with me this moment and the ones that weren’t there
because they had chosen to put an invisible wall of betray between us.
I didn’t feel sorry for me,
I have probably built this life by my self
but never the less, I felt lonely.

sunset at moderna museet, stockholm

2007-12-21T14:58:00.000+01:00

the beautiful and joyful Alexander Calder's sculptures at the winter's sunset

if ...

2007-12-19T16:52:00.002+01:00

I’m hearing in every store the sound of old Christmas’ songs.

"Coming Home for Christmas" had never had a meaning to me
and with the years living as a foreigner, not even the crowds at the shops, affect me.
I just don’t get any feeling,
either sadness or stress because I’ve succeeded
in keeping me outside the Christmas' stress and
don’t be distressed because
I don’t have anyone special to buy a present to.

Every friend I have is telling me all the time
about the meaning of living
and the necessity of being thankful and joyful.
But I have difficulties to see why.
You think many times that’s better to think
of what you can do for the others,
independent of what you are doing or who you are helping to.
Though, many times during the last years,
I have been taken for granted
and then everything, had turned up to be at last my own fault
—if the time comes when I have nothing left to give.
Nobody either thanks or tell me how glad they have become.
They just go away without any explanation forgetting
how much they had told me that they loved me.
I don’t want to be bitter.
I just want to find happiness
inside my self and wait for my turn
... if ever comes ...

flying again

2007-12-16T23:49:00.000+01:00

To reconcile my self once again with joy
to be able to fly and feel my self weightless,
glad without needing you for giving me the reason
for being, for laughing, for existing…

empty glasses

2007-12-15T12:16:00.000+01:00

I got the glasses as a Christmas' present
(Our first Christmas together)

I looked at them today and I realized that they
had lost theirs meaning
They are now just empty glasses
That can’t awake sad feelings of betray
Neither can they awake joy or hope or future
They have not attached sense anymore
They have become insignificant things
Just empty glasses

musetta

2007-12-08T17:05:00.001+01:00

It was my last evening in Rome last year and in the most beautiful sunset I went to an operatic concert in the atrium of the church. They would play La Bohème.

The warm breeze and the short distance between the public and the singers created an special atmosphere. I was able to hear every word they sang and see theirs faces that showed empathy with the meaning of what they felt. Tears, laugh, smile, desire, impotence, pain and the most beautiful Musetta I ever heard and seen…
[click on the headline and you'll hear the famous "waltz of musetta"]

by the ocean

2007-12-08T13:53:00.000+01:00

... and that day by the shore
we were playing like children
the sand felt soak under our feet
and we were near each other
and we played once again,
the sand was wet and cold
but we were filled with those feelings
that we always have shared in silence...

chairs and design

2007-12-07T20:13:00.000+01:00

My former professor told me when we were talking about furniture design and chairs in particular that design is always related to a function and the function to the human body

We were talking about things that are art or design.
They are of course different.
If you design a chair you have to think that there is only one way to sit on it in
—order to get a proper rest, work, listen to music and so on.

The thing is that you can transform as much as you want the colors, materials, forms but you can’t transform the human body—not for the next trend or season anyway.

There are functional chairs (and many, really beautiful ones) and chairs made as a work of art.
They are not for sitting they are sculptures
Just for the eye.

posters for an exhibition

2007-12-06T10:47:00.000+01:00

I got an invitation to be part of an exhibition last September.
I did not panic because I never do
but I had a problem because it had past a time since
I worked for a show and neither I wanted
to have the same old things at the gallery.

I found out after a while that I would design posters,
not for announcing anything especial
but poster as an art expression.

I illustrated words both with typography and the human body.
I like very much the shapes of a beautiful body and most of all,
the things that you are able to tell through a gesture, colors,
intensity and feelings, well, if you are good enough to translate
and catch those terms with your camera and different elements.
(on the picture, eight posters, mixed technique)

unfair

2007-12-04T12:50:00.000+01:00

… And I said, “you have such a fine body (a deep sigh!), do you work out often?
… No, I don’t he said. I’m only play squash with my buddies sometimes.
What a hell! I thought and look at me, the one that go to the gym to work out, being always on diets, sweating the hell out of me, and nothing…
… but he said that I had a nice body when at the same time he embraced me and pull me against his body (did he need eyeglasses?) so I could feel his chest against mine and I thought that when you miss something you get it in a way or another in these times of outsourcing and entrepreneurial thinking … and I got the chance of enjoying this perfect and beautiful body and the fact that he thought that I also was beautiful and pretty … well, life is not always a bitch.

living in milan 4.12.07

2007-12-04T10:53:00.001+01:00

Dear Alex,
Why must a window display become such a monstrosity?
Panettone, sliced and studded with diamonds....surrounded by shoes.
Milan: The World of Luxury.

A van rushed past me. "Attention: Cashmere in Transport"
Well, I certainly paid attention.

And on the way home, I passed a man, clearly homeless.
He was asking for money, of course, and using a
Louis Vuitton bag to collect it.

This is luxury?