LARS NORÉN – THINGS, a text by Maria Miesenberger

LE DÉJEUNER SUR L’HERBE – IN THE...

Onlineauction October 8 – 17.

Visning October 13 – 17.

I have my books packed away, I don’t even have all of Lars’s diaries, but now I wish I did so that I could read the sentences that came before and after the fragments that Lars’s daughter Nelly had cut out and sent to me. To rediscover the time and place when they were written, and what life revolved around at that moment. In our invisible circles, which were important to us both, but which also required a certain distance and gap, I believe we nurtured a kind of longing. A longing for intimacy. This intimacy was at its strongest in our thoughts and in our work, as well as in the curiosity about the other one’s process. And, I feel, it was kept strong because of the distance and the freedom that was allowed. With this in mind that intimacy is just as strong now. At least to me. That is what I think, what I feel. Through his works, he continues to circle around me: my work circling and passing through his.

My then gallerist Lars Bohman was at Karlavägen in Stockholm, just a stone’s throw from where Lars lived. Bohman told me that Lars would often visit the gallery when I was exhibiting Sverige/Schweden there (1999). What I didn’t know then was that a few years later we would come to collaborate. Lars was putting on his play Stilla Vatten, directed by himself, at the Jewish Theatre in Stockholm and invited me to be present at parts of the play’s rehearsals, but also to create a presence on the stage by allowing one of my photographic works (of a mother holding her child in her arm) to be part of the performance. Already in the entrance hall, the audience was met by an exhibition of several pieces from my Sverige/Schweden series. And these images came to accompany Lars in his work with other texts and plays throughout the years.

In 2000 Lars received a scholarship that made it possible for him to buy my artwork Utan titel/Ohne Titel (I det.../Im Grünen...). The piece was taken to Gotland and hanged there the summer when he wrote, amongst other things, Stilla Vatten.

I exhibited at Lunds Konsthall in 2002. During the week of installing the show, I got tickets to see Måsen (The Seagull), directed by Lars Norén at Lunds Stadsteater. I was completely taken aback by it. It was as if the actors on stage were performing my textile sculptures (Hide & Seek), as if my shades of light and darkness, presence and absence, were given words in this, his interpretation of The Seagull.

Now I harbour a desire to re-read those books of Lars’s, especially Ingen, where I feel as if I recognise my own images as they flicker past in the text. “Maria! I’m writing! I’m looking at your images in the book and I write!” This is what Lars called out to me from the other side of S:t Paulsgatan as we passed each other, waving on opposite sides of the street. Draw attention to and reference. I have been meaning to do this for a while, but have not yet done it. I wish I had got there, and that that book would have happened, that that text would have been written – like we talked about and like I dreamt about. That would have been nice.

I still dream about it.

Auction October 8 – 17 Estimate 100 000 SEK.