#386 Karlavagnen - Ursa Major

I made this work by placing seven stones in the wet filler, forming the shape of the asterism the Big Dipper or The Plough, part of the star constellation, Ursa Major.

I used the Swedish word for the title to focus on the importance of the stars to location. The constellations look different depending on where you are on earth, and they have been used for navigation for ages. I find this connection between the local and the universal beautiful.

Stones appear as mystical objects to me. So dense and mute and old. I feel they somehow represent the psychoanalytical register of the Real. It signifies the dimension beyond phenomenon, how matter is in itself before it is interpreted by perception. A stone is so oblivious to its exterior, it could be hovering in space in a galaxy far, far away, or it could be placed in wet filler on a panel in my studio. Something is fascinating and, at the same time, deeply disturbing about this.

The series features works with an appendix placed on top of the work or close to it. This object is exterior to the image plane, the illusionary "window" in the picture, but is still an intrinsic part of the whole. It connects or makes visible the two dimensions of an artwork - its inner logic and the relation to its surrounding.
The title references both the famous campaign by Coca-Cola and Immanuel Kant's notion of the thing in itself. It means that subjects can only experience the phenomenons as they present themselves, through perception. It is always fundamentally different from what the things are outside the barrier of language - in themselves.

Res Ipsa is a compilation of works made by an act shaping the filler once it is prepared inside the frame. The works thus function as a recording device and give a statement of the event taking place while the filler was still wet.

Res Ipsa is Latin for "the thing itself" and is part of the juridical term "Res ipsa loquitur" (the thing speaks for itself), used when an injury or accident in itself clearly shows who is responsible, such as an instrument left inside a body after surgery.