TOMAS COLBENGTSON
Soejvene / Shadows
29.11.2024
Tomas Colbengtson's art – images, objects, sculptures, installations – places us as viewers, as eyewitnesses, on a fragile ark, a vessel that has arrived at the crossroads of the present, where pasts and futures intertwine.
We are allowed, urged, compelled to witness how the art brings together – and thereby reshapes, transforms – times, places, landscapes, beings, faces, souls, worlds. Here, even the materials themselves bear witness, speak and tell stories.
The glass that preserves and makes inaccessible, protects and exposes, encloses and displays. The glass that gently encapsulates and presents images, like archaeological finds in secure storage, while at the same time, through reflection or transparency, incorporates the surroundings and the wider world.
The photograph, imprisoned, locked into its unyielding eternal present, stubbornly insisting on its monosyllabic, silent – yet bottomless – modus operandi: to show presence through absence, to preserve by ceasing, to reveal life by, through a rift in time, seeking those who have passed on. A kind of freezing fire operates within every photograph, every image, throughout all of Tomas Colbengtson's art.
Here, time is always layered, always provisional, unresolved. Just as places are negotiable, ambiguous, carriers of many stories. The landscapes, one stratum upon another, overlapping layers, relentlessly pierced by one another. The people, the faces, the souls – discreet and transient, yet struck, fragile, volatile, and yet unwavering despite their vulnerability, wounded and simultaneously resurrected; the art repairs, restores, reclaims but also reshapes, reveals and recreates.
Jan-Erik Lundström, 2024
Speil, 2024
Unique
Screenprint on polycarbonat
50 x 60 cm
NOK 25.000,-
+ 5% tax to the Relief Fund of Visual Artists
Tomas Colbengtson, born in 1957, grew up in a small village near Björkvattnet, Tärna, Sweden, close to the Arctic Circle. In his art, Tomas explores how colonial legacies have transformed Indigenous lives and landscapes, with a focus on the Sámi people and other Indigenous communities. He actively works to revitalize his Southern Sámi mother tongue and uses visual art as a medium to engage with Sámi history and collective memory.
Tomas continually experiments with new forms of printmaking and materials, ranging from glass and metal printing to etching and digital art. Through this, he seeks to create a language to articulate both the loss and rebirth of Sámi identity—issues of global relevance that touch us all. In 2018, he initiated Sápmi Salasta – Sápmi Embraces, one of the first artist residencies dedicated to artists engaged with Indigenous themes.
Colbengtson has been an active artist since 1991 and an Indigenous curator since 2016. He is educated at Konstfack in Stockholm, where he also serves as a professor. His works have been exhibited in renowned art institutions worldwide.
