A Jumble of joie de vivre and Loss/Sara Arvidsson

Someday my parents will die. Although I know this, I nonetheless have a hard time getting used to the thought. They say that when your parents die is when you truly understand life’s transience. The child inside you dies a bit, and you are hurled into a different reality.

Johan Suneson’s 2021 work “Hejdå Limbo/ pappatrappan och mammatrappan” (Goodbye Limbo/Pappa Stairs and Mamma Stairs) reflects on the different phases of life, its irrevocable end, and the memories that remain. The two sculptures, which were created seven years after the death of his mother and one year after his father’s passing, are reminiscent of bulky spiral staircases. The landings are covered in ethereal watercolours, and I perceive the scenes within them as events from the parents’ lives, or more accurately, those events as filtered through the artist’s eyes. The sculptures stretch toward the heavens, but it would be difficult to say on which end the narratives start and finish.

The work’s title –“Hejdå Limbo” – (Goodbye Limbo) originates from a conversation between Johan and his father when he was in hospital. The father had received treatment for a heart attack, and the plans for his discharge and return home – which were in the hands of doctors and home care services – were taking a long time. The son, Johan, said that they were in Limbo, and when the father was eventually discharged, he called out “Goodbye limbo!” to the hospital staff as he left. The story is not only touching and tragicomic; it also says something about how people, as children, often prepare themselves for the death of their parents.

The first time I saw Johan Suneson’s “stairs” was at an exhibition at Galleri PS in Gothenburg in 2016. There were also strange sculptures resembling animals that almost seemed to come from a fable. That “almost” is important here, because there was also something murky about them, an indistinctness that is generally not associated with pedagogical tales for children. When I look at the documentation from that exhibition today, it seems to me that the figures had travelled in a time machine and that their elastic, knobby limbs could be an effect of that journey. One telling example is the teddy bear-like creature dressed in a shirt and suit pants stretching a long, spaghetti-like arm toward a tiny structure reminiscent of a bed covered with a black blanket. On the head end of the bed is a vague, elderly face that has been carved into a piece of wood peeks out. Is it a sickbed? The bear’s outstretched hand resting on the blanket seems to both calm and comfort. The fear of age is mixed with the childhood longing for tenderness; these two phases of life during which a human is most vulnerable and has no robust shell in which to retreat.

The newly painted “Gatans röst” (The Voice of the Street, 2020-2021) is surreal and depicts a megaphone of sorts, spewing something that resembles a red earthworm or a long tongue onto a dark city street. Is the voice hopeful or foreboding? The work offers no definitive answer. When I look at this and other Suneson’s works, I can’t help but think of Philip Guston. It’s not only the meatiness and the amoeba shape of this particular painting that lead my thoughts to that expressionist; it’s also about how they both seem to be stimulated by stirring the pot of “Art”.

“Intermezzo” (2019-2021) on the other hand has a Goya quality. The monkey-like creature in the painting looks at the observer in terror, as if captured while fleeing. The yellow spots on the figure’s face and torso heighten the hysteria of the expression, as does the soiled frame. I can imagine that was how Dorian Gray’s portrait looked in the end, after years of amassing sin and pleasures.

In “Kedjehusbråk” (Terrace House Conflict, 2016-2018) the title acts as a key. The frantic colours spill over into each other, but I can still discern some grainy faces and the outline of a house. The centre of the image is a furious red and one imagines a wild fight, a crescendo, tearing apart the well-planned idyll. One can envision what led up to the scene: a few neighbours meet up one evening to drink a few glasses and share a good meal, the alcohol starts flowing a bit too profusely and suddenly some unknown dispute erupts. Thematically, there is something here that I consider typical Suneson: the thrust from the everyday to the drastic incident that tears the sense of security to shreds and leads the event in a new and abnormal direction.

It’s impossible to write about Johan Suneson without mentioning his collaboration with his colleague and friend Leif Skoog. The two have worked together on and off for many years, and the works they have produced are just as magic as they are bizarre. In their art, the concept of the Swedish Welfare State is mixed with nature romanticism, pop culture, art history and childish comic-book aesthetics. Their performances combine these ingredients and invoke a shamanistic art that celebrates the serendipitous process. One example is the performance “Från A till B och tillbaka igen” (From A to B and Back Again, 2016), which was part of the exhibition “Skogsliv – Mellby fria kultur kommun” (Life in the Woods – Mellby Free Culture Municipality). Here, the forest was the stage, but they also created a sculpture made up of Lebanese bread, brushwood and more, that was meant to depict a mythological forest nymph. The memory of the revolutionary transsexual artist Conchita Wurst, who took the prize at the 2014 Eurovision contest, were still fresh, and according to the artists, she was an inspiration for the hybrid-like sculpture. In 2019, Johan Suneson returned to the same forest, this time on his own, to create another bread sculpture meant to encourage a dialogue of sorts with nature’s greedy animals. ”Whimsical” is a very appropriate word for the piece.

One of Leif and Johan’s most humorous creations is story of “Jakob Storhufvud” (Jakob Bigcrowne). This chap with the aristocratic name and the gigantic head makes a return in a number of comics. I became absorbed in “Jakob Storhufvuds äventyr: det dubbla uppdraget” (The Adventures of Jakob Bigcrowne: The double mission, 2015). The narrative is dizzying, hurling psychotically between centuries and nations. The protagonist has a special gift: every time he injures his head in some way, a new journey through time begins, and instead of the usual comic-book stars, he is blinded by modern art by Lennart Rodhe. On one of these escapades, he manages to get to know Marie Antoinette and gallantly offers to take her place on the guillotine. It’s hysterical and fantastic in its entirety.

When I encounter Johan Suneson’s work, it continually strikes me that it is often situated deceptively close to fragmented reality. His work brings together elements that appear impossible to unite without arranging them in a crystal clear, logical pattern. The doctored fiction, liberated from all loose ends, thus has little in common with his ingenious works. By no means does that mean there are no points of contact with other artists or movements: I’m thinking of e.g. Joseph Beuys’ border-defying idealism, the Arte Povera-movement’s repurposing of everyday materials and even James Joyce’s classic stream of consciousness book “Ulysses”.

There is no question that Johan Suneson seeks to awaken collectivist engagement in his surrounding environment. Often, guests and spectators even impact on his work, thus becoming co-creators. A telling example is “Samtidskonst i Bro” (Contemporary Art in Bro), where Suneson has collaborated with other artists and locals to animate the location with art. At the time of writing, Leif Skoog and Christoffer Modig are busy preparing for a new performance in Mellby called “Torna Zeffiro” (Pile Up Zephyr/Zephyr Returns) – in which a Gunnar Ekelöf poem melds with a new interpretation of the antique sculpture “Laocoon Group”. It will be accompanied by live music as well.

It nearly makes my head spin to think about all of the references that Johan Suneson weaves into his art, and all of the works he has initiated throughout his professional life thus far. And nonetheless, I don’t see him as fishing for some kind of venerable status or another; instead, his drive seems to be a never ceasing curiosity. His continual fluttering between different instances and historical personalities make his art unpredictable, which is rather uncommon in an era when artistic intention is expected to be defined before the outset.

This unplanned darting about is valuable in a number of ways. Spiritual junctions emerge: occasions where different perspectives intersect and give way to other ways of seeing. This pluralism also acts as a counterweight to the dualistic ”us-against-them” mentality that has grown in strength around the globe of late. Empathy requires that people try to imagine themselves into the lives of other people. By moving back and forth between different porous zones and not getting caught in one single closed sphere, his art implicitly encourages greater empathy.

Johan Suneson’s imaginary journeys seem also to be driven by a longing to resurrect people who have left behind their earthly bodies, to reach back in time and see himself from a different, clearer angle, and perhaps say a few things that were left unsaid. Quite simply, it’s about joie de vivre and about loss, interwoven in a dark and entangled skein that cannot be untangled. The emotional strings of the jumbled mess don’t seem to be able to lie still, either; they writhe and coil like reptiles in a nest. And I think of the “Laocoon Group” and its fat snakes, to which he and Leif and Christoffer will soon give shape in their very own way.

Sara Arvidsson
Art critic and journalist