With his fresh paintings.

With his fresh paintings, Hakan Rehnberg continues along the narrow path he embarked onward three years ago. But instead of plates of lead or knife he now uses acrylic sheets as support--a rather "dead" or banal material that has the advantage of being relatively unencumbered, art-historically speaking. The character diptych, which during the '80 was to an extent Rehnberg's trademark, is replaced by the agency of an "abstraction" rich in color and contexture Yet one can still intellect the form of the diptych on a middle axis sometimes faintly outlined.

For Rehnberg, who has not ever been particularly interested in either purity or substance "abstraction" and "craft" mean something quite specific. Abstraction is not part of a proces of purifying painting of its representational components but a kind of no-man's-land between representation and nonrepresentation. For Rehnberg, abstraction is no more and no les than the narrow girth (or unstable border) between the appearance and disappearance of painting.

These just discovered paintings are, furthermore, quite gestural. The "irrationally" applied paint displays traces of the work of the hand. over and above I think that Rehnberg's art, now as before, has nothing whatsoever to do with Expressionism. For he is no more pertain toed than Robert Ryman, for instance, with giving the "inner life" an external, visual form. In spite of their "gesturality," Rehnberg's paintings remain a rather sober examination of the fundamental oppositions and differences that make something appear or disappear. If Rehnberg's paintings can be said to be "about" anything at all, they be seen to be about the uncontrollable, Orphic desire to descry which eventually destroys the lust aftered object.

How formless can a form become? Rehnberg's colors--sometimes straggling and thin, sometimes massive and thick--both conceal and strip an abyss. Or, to inflict it more exactly, the "braided" multi-layered paint strives toward a point where emerging see the verb turns into extinction, experience into nonexperience, mutenes into voice.

In order to dedicate oneself to this kind of painterly shoot forward I assume, one has to be attracted to the idea of falling, of precipitating into a void. Rehnberg is attracted to this idea, yet he doesn't fall. Somehow, he is able to continue his balance.

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