"Not Dark Yet" by Martin Wickström from the Tom Böttiger Collection

Martin Wickström

"Not Dark Yet"

Martin Wickström is an artist who, in the postmodernist tradition, freely borrows and is inspired by popular culture, which he mixes with pop art and photorealism. The title "Not Dark Yet" alludes to Bob Dylan's song of the same name, which begins with the lyrics: "Shadows are falling and I've been here all day".

The work is part of a series of paintings of buildings that Wickström saw during an extended stay in New York. The images are calm and quiet, set in a strangely beautiful twilight. The windows are dark and empty but reflect the sky, the trees, and the world outside. The façade becomes a border between inside and outside, now and then, what has been and what will be, but also a border between the viewer and the art.

In 2009, Martin Wickström, like Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd in the 1960s, announced that he was taking a break. In 2012 he returned with the exhibition Not Dark Yet at Angelika Knäpper Gallery. There he exhibited seven series of paintings, including the auction's painting, with scattered motifs reflecting lines from Dylan's 'Not Dark Yet'.