contemporary mythology
Thomas Hansson’s work is often about emptiness or nostalgia and a search for meaning in the meaningless. In his visual world - which often depicts simple, but often slightly twisted everyday objects such as porcelain figurines or costume masks - he searches for some form of symbolism or contemporary mythology.
"It is always the image's meaning that drives my work forward," he says.
For some years now, Thomas Hansson has been working with depictions of shirts. In his painting practice, he has made hyper-detailed works where every fold and shading of the well-ironed and folded shirt is reproduced. Now he has also produced a linocut with the same motif, varied in three colour schemes, available at ed-art.se.
"I find the shirts exciting because they somehow symbolize hope. How they are neatly folded, and maybe will never be as perfect as they are right there in the store.”
“At the same time, they are a symbol of power; dressing in a shirt can be dressing to fit into a hierarchy. Then there is also something in the repetition. All shirts are folded the same way – everything has to fit into the same template.”
Linocut is a printing technique where the artist carves out the motif in a soft linoleum board. The colour is rolled onto the plate, which is then pressed against a paper and run through a printing press. It is the raised parts of the plate that hold the colour; thus linocuts belong to the relief print family.
Thomas Hansson has used the same plate which he has inked with different colours. On two of the prints, he has used paper that he first painted by hand to get different background colours. The prints are made in very small editions of 3 to 5 prints.
