Markus Åkesson | Now You See Me
Markus Åkesson draws arcane and mystical journeys on the printed cloth. It is through its patterns – all rooted in the history of art and ideas – that his language is articulated and his symbolic research is deployed, in an in-between world bathed in disturbing strangeness, conducive to poetic escape.
There is the dance of death, directly inspired by the engravings of Holbein the Younger, a saraband where the dead and the living dance together in the heart of a period ravaged by the Black Death, vanity par excellence, a reaction to the anguish of death. There is the witch riding a leaping goat upside down, originating from a famous print by Albrecht Dürer, with a muscular body, breasts plumped up, hair in the wind, face howling; she symbolizes occult powers, ritual and magic. There is the moth, a symbol that Markus has been painting for many years. As the dying sun reaches the horizon and floods the sky with orange light, breaking the thin membrane that separates the real world from the spiritual world, the winged animal comes out of its torpor.
