Martin Bladh is a Swedish artist of multiple mediums. His work is dark, visceral, hypnotic and disturbing, laying bare themes of violence, obsession, fantasy, auto-eroticism, self-mutilation, domination, submission, narcissism. Further beyond that, there is also a tribal, base, essential quality to his work, a kind of saving grace which grounds his art and makes it extremely rare and extremely valid.
Shane Levene
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When Martin Bladh confronts violence, pain and blood with naked bodies, the first impression might be that he seeks attention by using controversial methods. That he walks in the same footsteps as Hermann Nitsch; between the cruelty of beauty and disgust. But to look through such a narrow angle would be deceitful, although Bladh confesses his kinship with Nitsch when he in an article in the publication Heterogénesis (No. 50-51, 2005) with the title 010804, 14.00 – Castle Prinzendorf´s Chapel (First floor) writes: “It’s the cameras duty to immortalise the beauty of the passion, just like the great painter’s of old time”. However Bladh is considerably more radical in his attitudes and becomes more straightforward than Nitsch when it comes to confront violence with the beautiful, to see the beauty in the body of the beast; I understand Bladh as more related to Francis Bacon than to Nitsch, and most obvious to Bacon’s religious inspired queer art. What Bacon in a photographic manner perceives as the truth and tries to capture with paint and brushes, Bladh transforms into action, on stage and video.
Bo I. Caverfors
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Looking at Bladh’s work one can discern influences from Yukio Mishima, Francis Bacon, Hermann Nitsch, Peter Sotos, Georges Bataille, Dennis Cooper, Dennis Nilsen, David Nebreda, even St Sebastian. They’re all there, all openly on display, yet remarkably Bladh’s work progresses past these influences and finds its very own standing alongside them. There are not many who can transform a Bacon painting into their own, who can litter their work with the quotes of writers and philosophers and have those words seem more their own than their owners’. Martin Bladh can, and does. His arrangement of collages, his cut ups and pasting, his personal markings, all lend a uniqueness to what he does that is unmistakable: everything he produces signed with a signature that cannot be scrawled.
Indeed, the work of Martin Bladh is just that, ‘a work’, an entire body, a Gesamtkunstwerk. His pieces can only be viewed separately, but they never make more sense than when seen within the context of his overall oeuvre. Through a bombardment of the senses, which comes from full exposure to Bladh’s art, one acquires a kind of cognitive idea of his expression and no one part represents that better than the whole – the body.
Shane Levene
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Are we witnessing an”empowerment” or a”victimisation” in the art of Martin Bladh? I think that, as with all great art, it’s essentially a matter of who the viewer is. Again, if the artist delivers a clear-cut explanation, then pieces like Bladh’s, for instance, will be nothing more than mere play, mere acting.
If someone who feels like a victim in life is confronted with violent performances like Bladh’s, it’s likely that he or she will feel that it’s all about victimisation. Same thing for the viewer who feels a lot of aggression: he or she will react mostly to the protagonistic point of view. The dubious grey area of the human psyche’s reactive patterns is one of the main ingredients of Martin Bladh’s art, I’d say.
We live in an era where art has become more or less completely commodified. Very little art arouses feelings that transcend the intellectual sphere. If someone digs deeper, there’s likely to be revulsion or confusion on the viewer’s side. Does Martin Bladh care? Of course not.
Carl Abrahamsson
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Reading Bladh’s videos in a multi perspective way, with the help of Bataille, Mulvey, Foucault and Reich, are giving us an image of a very romantic artist that’s very critical against civilization. This could be understood as an anomaly in the contemporary art scene. One aspect contradicts this notion – the frequent references to the stage. As the row of light in Matt. 5:29-30 and Talk Show 2, witch is taken from a make-up mirror, and the theatre curtain in Talk Show 3. Bladh is aware of the collapse of the Grand Narratives but persists to return to the subject of the holy reunion with eternity through sacrifice. But this is a staged sacrifice, the body and the activities of the body as a constructed reality – a body without organs. The castration is the maybe a step towards the theatre of cruelty, towards Antonin Artaud’s vision of a free man: “When you will have made him a body without organs, then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom.
Hans T. Sternudd
Shane Levene
-
When Martin Bladh confronts violence, pain and blood with naked bodies, the first impression might be that he seeks attention by using controversial methods. That he walks in the same footsteps as Hermann Nitsch; between the cruelty of beauty and disgust. But to look through such a narrow angle would be deceitful, although Bladh confesses his kinship with Nitsch when he in an article in the publication Heterogénesis (No. 50-51, 2005) with the title 010804, 14.00 – Castle Prinzendorf´s Chapel (First floor) writes: “It’s the cameras duty to immortalise the beauty of the passion, just like the great painter’s of old time”. However Bladh is considerably more radical in his attitudes and becomes more straightforward than Nitsch when it comes to confront violence with the beautiful, to see the beauty in the body of the beast; I understand Bladh as more related to Francis Bacon than to Nitsch, and most obvious to Bacon’s religious inspired queer art. What Bacon in a photographic manner perceives as the truth and tries to capture with paint and brushes, Bladh transforms into action, on stage and video.
Bo I. Caverfors
-
Looking at Bladh’s work one can discern influences from Yukio Mishima, Francis Bacon, Hermann Nitsch, Peter Sotos, Georges Bataille, Dennis Cooper, Dennis Nilsen, David Nebreda, even St Sebastian. They’re all there, all openly on display, yet remarkably Bladh’s work progresses past these influences and finds its very own standing alongside them. There are not many who can transform a Bacon painting into their own, who can litter their work with the quotes of writers and philosophers and have those words seem more their own than their owners’. Martin Bladh can, and does. His arrangement of collages, his cut ups and pasting, his personal markings, all lend a uniqueness to what he does that is unmistakable: everything he produces signed with a signature that cannot be scrawled.
Indeed, the work of Martin Bladh is just that, ‘a work’, an entire body, a Gesamtkunstwerk. His pieces can only be viewed separately, but they never make more sense than when seen within the context of his overall oeuvre. Through a bombardment of the senses, which comes from full exposure to Bladh’s art, one acquires a kind of cognitive idea of his expression and no one part represents that better than the whole – the body.
Shane Levene
-
Are we witnessing an”empowerment” or a”victimisation” in the art of Martin Bladh? I think that, as with all great art, it’s essentially a matter of who the viewer is. Again, if the artist delivers a clear-cut explanation, then pieces like Bladh’s, for instance, will be nothing more than mere play, mere acting.
If someone who feels like a victim in life is confronted with violent performances like Bladh’s, it’s likely that he or she will feel that it’s all about victimisation. Same thing for the viewer who feels a lot of aggression: he or she will react mostly to the protagonistic point of view. The dubious grey area of the human psyche’s reactive patterns is one of the main ingredients of Martin Bladh’s art, I’d say.
We live in an era where art has become more or less completely commodified. Very little art arouses feelings that transcend the intellectual sphere. If someone digs deeper, there’s likely to be revulsion or confusion on the viewer’s side. Does Martin Bladh care? Of course not.
Carl Abrahamsson
-
Reading Bladh’s videos in a multi perspective way, with the help of Bataille, Mulvey, Foucault and Reich, are giving us an image of a very romantic artist that’s very critical against civilization. This could be understood as an anomaly in the contemporary art scene. One aspect contradicts this notion – the frequent references to the stage. As the row of light in Matt. 5:29-30 and Talk Show 2, witch is taken from a make-up mirror, and the theatre curtain in Talk Show 3. Bladh is aware of the collapse of the Grand Narratives but persists to return to the subject of the holy reunion with eternity through sacrifice. But this is a staged sacrifice, the body and the activities of the body as a constructed reality – a body without organs. The castration is the maybe a step towards the theatre of cruelty, towards Antonin Artaud’s vision of a free man: “When you will have made him a body without organs, then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom.
Hans T. Sternudd