joakim@joakimforsgren.com
    joakim@joakimforsgren.com

2023

Swedish Ecstasy

Bozar, Brussels

At an auction the artist Joakim Forsgren found a series of small drawings that Charles XII is supposed to have made absentmindedly during a government meeting. With the aid of a soldering iron, Forsgren carefully reproduced the king’s drawing. Who guided Charles XII’s hand? What strange figures: serials and geometric shapes – they correspond to the imagery of both Swedenborg and af Klint. And by an apparent coincidence it appears that in Stockholm the spiritualist Edelweiss Society, of which Hilma af Klint was a member for a time, maintained contact with the spirit of Charles XII.

 

Joakim Forsgren – Drawing after Charles XII (2013). Soldering iron on paper. Photo: Jan Watteus

Hilma af Klint – Altarpiece (1907). Photo: Jan Watteus

Drawings after Charles XII (2013) and Cogito/Sum (2021). Detail from Peter Cornell’s display cases. Photo: Jan Watteus

 

Curator Daniel Birnbaum: “I was the instrument of ecstasy,” wrote Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, who today is celebrated all over the world. Af Klint was not alone. This exhibition puts her work in context for the first time. In fact, mysticism and esoteric speculation are central themes in the creations of some of Sweden’s most important cultural figures, historically and today.

With: Emanuel Swedenborg, August Strindberg, Carl Fredrik Hill, Ernst Josephson, Ivan Aguéli, Hilma af Klint, Anna Cassel, De Fem, Carsten Höller, Christine Ödlund, Lars Olof Loeld, Daniel Youssef, Peter Cornell, Joakim Forsgren and Cecilia Edefalk.