Ture Sjölander Broschyr
Ture Sjölander is the Swedish artist who had the greatest influence on international art in the 20th century. Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine! You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond 2
Garbo and Chaplin
When “Time” (1965/66), “Monument” (1968) and “Space in the Brain” (1969) were shown on Swedish National TV and at international TV and art shows they had a profound and lasting influence on the international development of 20th Century Art and IT-Culture.
These original and still unique experiments in electronically manipulated moving imagery have left repercussions in photography, video art, animation, electronic art and on Social Media. By those in the know, Sjölander is hailed as the forerunner/inventor for both electronically created animated movies and for today’s ubiquitous computer games. "The inventor of the computer animation is Swedish” Konstperspektiv (Art perspective), 1, 2005.
Sjölander, born in Sundsvall 1937, had a glorious beginning of his career and is well represented in many museums. Soon enough, he became an outcast because he criticized the museums for catering to commercial gallery culture (“pictures on the wall”) instead of promoting inquest and innovation. His position was anathema for the growing interest for art as investment in the late 20th century. At one point Sjölander was all but erased from the history of art. Today, however, no modern international work on the history of the 20th century avant-garde art will pass over his contribution, nor will he be bypassed in any Doctoral Theses on the subject.
For several decades, Sjölander has been active at Great Barriers Reef on the east coast of Australia, where he has spent full time in investigating the communication potential and also the pitfalls of the Internet. In 2017, he momentarily reappeared and made a serigraphy of 50 signed prints. “Garbo and Chaplin”. This is obviously a sudden concession to “art on the wall” which, of course, is typical to the erratic flings of life positioning of Sjölander.
Garbo, because Sjölander once was a friend of the aging Greta Garbo and created a book about her.
Chaplin, because Sjölander once made a serigraphy of Charles Chaplin who bought the entire edition and distributed within his family.
Sjölander is a 21st Century icon. I welcome his reappearance and I hope it will become permanent.
Mr. Restany was best known as one of the founders and a tireless promoter of the European movement of the 1960's called the New Realism. Emphasizing found materials rather than representational imagery or formalist abstraction, the New Realism included artists like Yves Klein, who covered all kinds of objects with his signature ''International Klein Blue'' paint; Arman, who created accumulations of junk or store-bought objects; Christo, who wrapped found objects in fabric and rope; Jean Tinguely, who constructed absurd, self-destroying machines; and Daniel Spoerri, who made sculpture by gluing the remains of meals to dining tables.
New York Times, Ken Johnson, June 5, 2003
Syd Barrett had seen Ture Sjölander’s breakthrough movie “Time” and came to Ture's exhibition together with Andrew King to discuss collaboration. Both Syd Barrett, who was the original initiator of Pink Floyd and Andrew King, who was the band's manager, left the band shortly thereafter and the collaboration never came about. It would have been a good match.
