Ola Billgren

The present catalogue item ‘Skymningstimme’ is a unique work in Billgren’s oeuvre. The size of the canvas combined with the complexity of the subject means it absorbs the viewer. Part of the ‘Cityscapes’ series, it functions a collage of different places, of sky, earth and air. The saturated atmosphere can only be described as chaos, something that the size of the canvas reinforces. In a piece of writing about ‘Skymningstimme’ Bo Nilsson describes the unique environments Billgren creates in his work: “…in another painting Billgren has called this intermediate state between city and countryside his ‘terrain vague’, best translated as ‘uncertain terrain’. Terrain vague is not a physical place but more a mental state, characterized by a magnificence that may be defined as sublime. It is a complex feeling that holds considerable beauty but also a sense of threat or danger, an added dimension of civilization’s downfall, in German usually referred to as ‘Götterdämmerung’, the twilight of the Gods. The different pictorial levels make us contemplate different elements of our civilization and if we interpret Billgren correctly, things do not seem quite right in our world.
Is it up to the viewer to pause and linger on these the different stages of collapse and in doing so become aware of what is going on in the world around us?”