Leonard Forslund’s new series of works Drömsplitter (split dreams) combine two very different outcomes: a colourful, almost psychedelic pallet, with a dark and fragmented element. The paintings are built up of several layers; the furthest layer being an area of bright colour, over which there is a dark layer, a part of which Forslund has removed leaving that which remains to appear as a silhouette against the background. In this, there remains a sense of the removed, absent layer.

Every day Leonard Forslund goes past Assistens Cemetery in Nørrebro, when he walks between his home on Fælledvej and his studio on Jagtvej. The cemetery is therefore, at present, an everyday occurrence and he uses it as the primary motif in this new series of paintings.

The paintings’ construction of motifs and layers provide a particular spaciousness and allow the viewer the opportunity to engage with and reflect over the work’s content and interpretations. The representations of reality demonstrated in Drömsplitter also go beyond the material, the expression of which is dreamlike.

Leonard Forslund (b. 1959, Sweden) was educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Art in 1988. He lives and works in Copenhagen.

Forslund is, among others, represented at The National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm, and Aros Art Museum in Århus along with being represented in collections at The Danish Art Foundation, Public Art Agency, Sweden, The New as well as The New Carlsberg Foundation. In 2009 Leonard Forslund received the Eckersberg Medal and has also received several other grants, including the Danish Art Foundation, the Danish-Swedish Culture Foundation and the Swedish Art Foundation.

Photo credits: Jan Søndergaard