Gunilla Klingberg na sua recente exposição no Bonniers Konstall, em Estocolmo (Suécia), continuou o questionamento do comum cidadão ocidental, um consumidor manipulado.  A artista apesar de não esperar que os seus trabalhos provoquem um revolucionário despertar colectivo, considera-os como grãos de areia na engrenagem do sistema e antitodos para a alienação colectiva provocada pelo consumismo.

Klingberg procura a integração do espectador nas sua obras, onde a espiritualidade se mistura com o materialismo, como se pode constatar nas razões para a escolha das cores. No trabalho da artista sueca os objectos comuns ressurgem rodeados de beleza para a observação a diferentes distâncias. Segue-se entrevista à artista.

Living and consuming - for you the materialism / consumerism is the “religion” of the moment?

- I think there is a lack of spirituality in the Western world today, where consumerism has partly taken over that role. And I have though about the fact that here there is a wide interest in New Age spirituality, and what I often see is another product, another shiny surface. The consumer world and the spiritual world merges.

In your works, you use many times the orange. Why? Visual reasons? Others? What do you pretend to transmite?

- The colour orange refers to extra prices but is also a spiritual colour as on the robes for buddhist monks and nuns or orange dressed holy mens in Índia.

The illusion is important for you?

- Visually I work with the distance and the close details. One gets lost in the patterns, they almost dislove, they fluctuate between abstract/recognicion.

You create beautiful objects, gives elegancy to what apparently isn't. Why?

- Cheap everyday objects from stores like IKEA have a seductive and even psychedelic potential that I use to create a clash.

The alienation movement - a vortex - which you creates in some of your works reflects the outside world, is a result of your experience or an attempt to integrate the observer in the work spacial area?

– If you mean the reflecting surfaces, like the surveillance mirror-globes in Mantric Mutation reflecting the surrounding logotype patterns as well as the viewer and the street-life, the intention is to integrate the observer in the work and the experience, to create a kind of visual loop.

At the recent exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall you created an environment with decorations and other items installed with different purposes (like the sphere, and white forms, interlinked, evolving through space). Two separate searches? Or complementary ones?

- The installations consists of several individual works that all are connected, but can also be seen as separate works.

At a formal level your work has a lot of Baroque. Is your expression a criticism? What is the role of decoration in your work? And of advertising?

- My logotype mandalas and patterns are images of how our daily rhythm of commonplace doings blends with the advertising and enters into our lives and minds deep down.  They are a link between our public and private spheres, maybe even to the collective unconscious.

Marks invade the space, walls, windows, projections, cube, star and the atmosphere itself ... Standards. Mazes. Optical effects. There are experiments with sound, repetition also [mantras]. The search for patterns is a scientific curiosity, an objectivity that contrasts with the subjectivity, beauty and elegance of the pieces.

The repetition - multiplication by "mirrors" - changes the meaning of forms. What are the reasons for all these repetitions? Create illusions, attract viewers? Mere visual effects? Or, rather these [repetitions] want to Awake him/her [viewer]?

- My raw material has a socio-economic reference, I pick it from the public or common spere, then I merge it with my own intentions and give it back in a distorted form.

In the show at Bonniers I included a new piece, Split Vision, consisting of mirrored bathroom-cupboards, creating a visual feedback of the exhibition at large, like a closed system, a loop. The self generated loop is important to me, a bit claustrophobic. In my repetitions there is always a small displacement, a mutation going on, in the printed patterns as well as in the sound works. It could resemble of a virus.

Your use of the Mandala seems to have an opposite direction of it's original purpose (which would be equivalent to the Awakening of Inner Self). By the reintroduction of elements of the "spirituality" [of East] in the West do you seek to recover it here?

- I experience a lack of essential symbols in my own culture. In some cultures ancient symbols and images still play a vital role in the daily doings of everyday life. I am interested in images used for spiritual guidance, like the mandala.

The society organizes, establishes rules, condition psychological and neurologically [the freedom of choice are apparent]. The rediscovery of Self erase them [conditions] or make possible the perception of sense or it's absence, like the reconstruction of the world - the consumer society - from its own interior. Do you work for the Human rediscover of Itself through common actions, performed daily, like a travel to the supermarket?

- I do not beleive that these type of actions will lead to any transformation, but all together the repeated actions forms a pattern that tells something about our life.

Confort, security, consume: keywords to the West. For you what is the role of Desire? What is the role for Having? And for Being?

- The expected qualities of a “good” citizen.

You give visibility to what is invisible. Small brands become the focus of "worship." Where did you pretend to go – with your art – beyond Warhol's tomato soup?

- The logotypes I use are rather hidden, distorted, made abstract, repeted into ornaments, than put in focus.

Sometimes your works are psychedelic, reflecting the alienation. Often there are interactions with all observers, as public art. Do you have any fears that, by acting on the minds of observers, would lead to the awakening or contribute to hypnotize them?

- The works are always on the border of being pleasant and unpleasant. In the everyday life we are bombarded with visual information that could be very hypnotizing and I would like to think of my works as a kind of antidote.

The importance of Symbols lies in the expression or in the “conceptual” representations?

- Both.

What is a Mandala for you?

- A doorway between the inner and the outer.

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