Svante: Order & Decay

About

When we are awake our consciousness is designed specifically to best facilitate everyday survival. It does this largely by helping us to interpret the world around us as quickly and efficiently as possible. As time passes our increasingly ordered minds develop a sense of realism, foresight and careful reflection.

We do, however, pay a price for this achievement of order in the adult mind. The limbic regions of the brain involved in emotion and memory can become limited and the ever- increasing importance of the ego, or sense of self, can cause cognition to become rusted stuck potentially resulting in narrow thinking, addiction, OCD and depression.

With the trials and tribulations of the daily grind, it is rarely easy to look at the world with the eyes of a child, to let go of our preconceptions and biases and to loosen the ego’s grip on the mind. Music, poetry, dance, and art can be a conduit to allow the brain to become less specialised and more integrated and to help us regain a sense of perspective.

This series of paintings explores the dichotomy between the ordered and disordered mind in relation to Friedrich Nietzsche’s analysis of the Birth of Tragedy and in particular to his interpretation of artistic endeavour as being either Apollonian or Dionysian. From the thesis of Apollonian order to the antithesis of Dionysian decadence and decay, comes a synthesis of equilibrium and connection which poses the question could consciousness survive the disappearance of the self?

The Artist

British artist Svante is an abstract expressionist known for his vibrant, colourful and often large-scale oil paintings. Following the completion of his studies at the Universities of Parma and Bologna in Emilia Romagna, Svante spent time in Florence where he met Silvio Loffredo, Professor of art at the Accademia and a pupil himself of the Austrian master Oskar Kokoschka. Together with Marco Sassone these artists formed part of Svante’s early influences. Initially focusing on rapid and often obscure figurative sketches which aimed to capture the essence of the individual in the context of a given time and emotional state, Svante eventually adopted oil painting as his primary medium.

With a barrage of broad powerful brush strokes, scratches and gouges, dashes of charcoal and layers of thickly applied oil paint, Svante’s work creates a sense of immediacy which is both raw and inescapable. Heavily influenced by the psychoanalytical studies of Daniel Kahneman, Svante exposes the interplay between thinking systems one and two. His creative process often involves the composition of a written stream of subconscious, a technique developed to enable the freeing of the mind and overcome the intimidation inherent in the blank canvas.