Opening
April the12th

​

 

Theodor Forsbeck was a Swedish artist who studied fine art at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm between 2007 and 2011. His art consists of ink drawings and paintings with high coloration, often containing figurative and narrative motifs with abstract elements. The drawings form the basis of his art, and in his paintings, he uses spray paint, acrylic, and hobby paint on various materials.

​

Theodor's drawings and paintings are built using multiple perspectives, angles, and planes, often with cosmic and dizzying depths and pitch-black skies. The motifs in the paintings lure the viewer with their massively exuberant and colorful forms. The viewer is driven into breathtaking scenes where various activities and urgent voices demand and compete for attention. The eye is literally forced to wander around the drawing or painting to take in everything that is happening at once. Upon closer examination, the viewer realizes that Theodor portrays a somewhat difficult, demanding, complicated, and difficult-to-navigate world with its own rules. Everything seems to be in an elevated atmosphere.

​

Theodor Forsbeck used the symbols of his time, and there is both humor, strong emotions, and clear references to the world around him, his own existence, and art in his image compositions. Theodore's visual world and artistic methods have similarities with artists such as Primus Mortimer Pettersson, Jean Dubuffet, C F Hill, and Henry Darger, as well as more contemporary artists such as Kjartan Slettemark, Dick Bengtsson, and the artist collective Dearraindrop. Artists like Theodor are linked to an unusual, inexhaustible creativity of their own and who are also slightly on the sidelines of the establishment. Something that was not always self-chosen. Theodor had heavy dark periods where he questioned himself and existence, productivity declined, and he isolated himself. For Theodor, whose lifeblood was to be in a creative state, these periods became unbearable.

​

Theodor chose a non-hierarchical approach in his artistry, where he advocated alternative artistic methods, built his own platforms, and networks. Theodor worked in parallel with the highly hierarchical art world and created a world and an art beyond hierarchies with his way of being and acting as an artist and human.

​

​