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Tore Svensson

Ever since Tore first presented us his idea for this exhibition two years ago at Hannah Gallery, we felt enthusiastic and agreed. We were very curious to see his works, already knowing that his work would certainly be good. When we held the first sketches and drawings in our hands, it exceeded our expectations and we were sure that this exhibition would even be one of the best we could possibly make.

For us, as art lovers, the joy is not only the jewels themselves but also the background: The references to art and Tore’s proposal of rethinking forms of the present, and related to fine artists he admires, at the same time, being 100% Tore Svensson.

33 pieces, constructed with steel, porcelain, silver, paint and MDF, based on a selection of paradigmatic forms that carry the value and the strength of the enigmatic  with them, the start of a graphic alphabet., pieces that reveal the will to reach a maximum level of expression from the maximum reduction. One of these universal objectives, which is not easy to achieve.


Tore Unplugged.
Text by Nichka Marobin on Tore Svensson’s Exhibition COVERS at Hannah Gallery Barcelona.
 
When I worked with this project I only choose artists, art or designs I like myself. I did not always feel comfortable when I used another artist's work for my brooches, but I always tried to make something own out of it. It is more a tribute to this artist than making a copy of their art. My project develops more like that than giving an answer of what is allowed to do or not.
/ Tore Svensson, Artist statement on COVERS.
 
 
In past times, the artistic apprenticeship followed precise rules rigorously observed by the young pupils who entered the workshop of a master. In a workshop, young pupils learned not only how to prepare a panel, but also the different artistic techniques. They acquired how to trace the lines, how to perceive perspective and how to recreate it. And, above all, pupils had to copy because “to copy” meant “to learn”.[1] They copied the works of their own master and other’s works in order to “feel” space and volutes, depth and curves, volumes and surfaces.[2]
 
So, the reproduction of other’s works was a method to acquire the know-how, the skills and the artistic techniques able to make prosperous the activity of a workshop. Of course, there were also examples of “unoriginal” works copied without permission, such as Marcantonio Raimondi’s woodcuts, who reproduced without permission the entire Dürer’s woodcut series of the Life of the Virgin (and his signature) with great success.[3]
 
The use of elements of a single artist reproduced in others’ works enabled the community of art historians to speak about “filiation” such as an “artistic loan” able to retrace and to detect the formal as well the aesthetical models employed in several works of art. This study is extremely helpful to recreate the chronology of the works of a single artist due to the lack of documentation.[4]
 
Very different is the case of a copy “d’après”, that is when a well-known work of art is reproduced by an artist whit the clear decontextualization of the subject, such as, for example, the portrait of Madame Récamier by Marcel Duchamp or “Las Meninas” by Picasso. In both circumstances, Duchamp and Picasso re-elaborate other’s works not only to impress their “signature” but also their own vision and style.[5]
 
Wondering about “the similarities in the works of many jewellery artists”, Svensson's focused his interest and study in those “coincidences” that offer a wide range of discussion about the reproduction of a work of art, about copies and about the closeness of someone’s work to another one [6]: “How close can you come to another artist without copy him?, who is entitled to a shape? Everyone can make a square but if you change the square a little is it then unique?”.[7]
In the case of the corpus of works created by the Swedish artist Tore Svensson, we are in front of a series of several Covers, as the artist-jeweller says in his statement: “In music it is common that an artist makes an interpretation of a famous song where the result mostly is close to the original, a cover.”[8]
 
This series is a tangible and sincere homage to different artist such as Miró, Jean Arp, Mary Corse, Imi Knobel, Malevich, Ellsworth Kelly; to shapes derived from single elements of ornament from the Summer Palace in Beijing; to mathematical concepts such as Lamé’s theories on super ellipses, which are declined in forms where light, surfaces, colours, curves and shapes display their essential pureness.

The one of TORE SVENSSON is an expressive and impressive microcosmos of rarefied pureness declined in ideas and forms which mould technique, materials, shapes and light. This pureness is pursued through a constant work of subtraction and attention, mastering materials and the different media such as metals, porcelain and MDF. Each choice about the material is strictly connected to the work of the Artist to whom Tore Svensson addresses his “cover”.
Moreover, all these different “covers” testify that forms, which live through Space and Time, find another dimension in the matter, creating those interferences and metamorphoses full of vitality that acquire new and unpredictable qualities especially when declined in different materials.
 
Forms, when migrating from different subjects to other ones, are exposed to a metamorphosis.[9] and the different techniques or media employed witness this change.
If we look carefully at Mary Corse’s oeuvres we can see that her entire career was devoted to the refraction of light and its perception by the viewer. In Svensson’s case, the pieces are a true homage to the American artist, but something has changed. This metamorphosis is due to the material, to the mastering technique on metal and the result is a different, unique work where light is perceived differently. This is due not only by the different size (a brooch vs. a large painted canvas) but because similar forms, employed in different media, acquire new properties.
The series of brooches inspired by Miró and realized in thin porcelain has the same dimension of the one painted in yellow or light blue. Their polished surface recalls the ones in the painting and the “conversation” starts thanks especially to the dialogue among sources, variations and references, like a mirror in a mirror in an endless mise en abyme.
 
Coming back to the starting connection to music for these “Covers”, I might suggest that the poetry of reduction, the expressive minimalism of lines, shapes and forms, the constant work of subtraction and the lightness (both tangible and ideal) display and show us a true “unplugged” Tore.

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