Fredrik Strid’s artwork comprises a large, black box from which mushrooms and a viscous mass appear to be pushing their way out through the gaps. Whether we are witnessing a growing threat or a natural process is uncertain. The term “black box” suggests that what is going on inside the box will forever remain shrouded in mystery. Black box was acquired for the Corona Collection, an initiative to support the Swedish art scene during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mushrooms Are Our Friends
“The machines are our friends” is a 1986 song by singer-songwriter Kjell Höglund, containing the lines:
You will no longer struggle
By the sweat of your brow
You will devote your time
To science and to the arts
Am I wrong or am I right?
Our friendship with the machines has been intensely debated during the past 35 years. And so has our relationship to nature. In his art, Fredrik Strid approaches nature in a fascinating, albeit unexpected, way.
“I have always related to nature in one way or another,” Fredrik Strid explains. “Initially, my relationship was perhaps rather more nostalgic; it was about things I had experienced and had been lost. Now I am more interested in how our culture is ‘consuming’ nature.”
Many artists garner inspiration from the natural light and nature’s richness of colours, but not Fredrik Strid. His works are often colourless – if you can call white and black colourless – and they operate as a kind of neutral projection surface on which we may encounter our memories, thoughts and fears of what the world has in store for us.
“I’m not at all interested in representing nature,” Fredrik Strid says. “I’m more attracted to human activities such as collecting, researching and exploring nature and the world around us. This is how we learn who we are.”
The work Black Box has its origin in a collaboration with Konstfrämjandet, the People’s Movements for Art Promotion, who asked Fredrik if he would consider working with mushrooms.
For the uninitiated, mushrooms may not be an obvious artistic topic. Fredrik, however, jumped at the idea.
“Mushrooms are mysterious. It is said that 80% of what’s going on in the Kingdom of Mushrooms remains undiscovered. Carl von Linné, who had a systematic and scientific view of nature, refused to deal with mushrooms, because he didn’t understand them,”
If one thinks about it, mushrooms are everywhere: from the edible delicacies waiting to be harvested in the autumn forests, to antibiotic drugs such as penicillin and the organisms living in our bowels. We live on the Planet of the Mushrooms. Are the fungi about to take over? Fredrik Strid’s artwork comprises a large, black box from which mushrooms and a viscous mass appear to be pushing their way out through the gaps. Whether we are witnessing a growing threat or a natural process is uncertain. The term “black box” suggests that what is going on inside the box will forever remain shrouded in mystery.
“I think of the piece as a frozen moment, a kind of Pompei in miniature where something has occurred that we don’t fully understand,” Fredrik explains. “I associate black with activities such as mining. One could imagine that the sculptor has stumbled on something unknown deep beneath the surface of the earth and is employing art in an attempt to understand both himself and the world.”
Future? Past? The borders are fluid in Fredrik Strid’s art. No matter what we do, mushrooms are our friends.
Artist biography Fredrik Strid
Fredrik Strid is an artist and sculptor, who, since 2010, has worked in Persbo Studio in northern Uppland County. His sculptures and projects are characterised by a distinct connection to nature. Strid’s work has been exhibited at institutions including Malmö Art Museum, Ystad Art Museum, Uppsala Art Museum, Kunsthaus Dresden, OR-Gallery in Vancouver, et al. He is represented in the collections of Region Skåne, Malmö Art Museum, Uppsala Art Museum and Skissernas Museum – Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, Lund.
