Tommy TC Carlsson

Tommy TC Carlsson (born July 12, 1958 in Långasjö, Emmaboda municipality , Sweden ) is a Swedish painter of realism in the special form of trompe l'œil painting with a proximity to hyperrealism . His oil paintings and lithographs are based on the techniques of the Dutch still life painters of the 17th century. He uses these to give representational painting expression in his own way. His personal style is shaped by objects whose spatial effect seems to make them independent. The extensive work of Tommy TC Carlsson has been shown in over 150 exhibitions since 1981.

Tommy TC Carlsson in the summer of 2010

Live and act

Tommy Carlsson was born in Långasjö, Sweden, in 1958. He grew up with his brother in the rural area of ​​southern Sweden. His parents ran a grocery store, whose sales room Tommy Carlsson now uses as a studio. The province of Småland appears in the present as a well-tended agricultural and cultural landscape, known through Astrid Lindgren , the famous glass blowing with artists such as Bertil Vallien and Ulrica Hydman-Vallien , wood crafts, but also through IKEA , which was founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad . In the past, Småland was a barren, rocky land, where people had to wrest the bare minimum for life from the stony ground. In the second half of the 19th century, a quarter of the Swedish population emigrated to America because of the prevailing poverty, including ancestors of Tommy Carlsson. This emigration movement originated in Småland, described among other things in the emigrant epic by the Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg , a tetralogy that was filmed by Jan Troell with Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow in the leading roles. Musically, this topic was processed in the musical Kristina från Duvemåla by the Swedish musicians and former ABBA members Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus .

The environment and the history of the people of this country, their closeness to nature and their ability to work hard shaped the painting of Tommy Carlsson especially in the first two decades of his artistic career. Here he learned to see and perceive. He placed objects of rural life and work at the center of his still lifes and painted wooden utensils that had been used in the 19th century to work on the barren soil, but also to help farmers fight oppression. With his work he outlined an early understanding of ecology and sustainability and thus a value orientation that is highly topical today. Tommy Carlsson received his first award in 1974. In 1977 he began his artistic training at the Öland Art School with a focus on painting, drawing, graphics and sculpture. Influenced by the realism that shaped his first works, Carlsson dealt with surrealism. However, he decided to depict his objects close to reality, emphasized by the choice and centering of the objects, the brilliance of their artistic depiction and the free background design.

Carlsson took part in various art competitions and received prizes and awards as well as a scholarship. Since the beginning of his work he has used the abbreviation “TC” as a signature. He has been involved in group exhibitions since 1981, and his own exhibitions of his works have taken place since 1983. From 1988 to 2015 Tommy Carlsson was supported by Ellen Lippe from Hamburg. The first exhibition abroad took place in 1990 in Germany (Hamburg), with great success. Further exhibitions in Hamburg followed in the following years, each with the support of the long-standing Swedish Consul General in Hamburg, Leif H. Sjöström, and in 2009 by the Swedish Honorary Consul in Hamburg, Leif A. Larsson. In 1996 Carlsson followed a call from the American Swedish Institute to Minneapolis . In addition to Sweden, the artistic presentation of Carlsson's work is now taking place in numerous countries such as Germany, the USA and Great Britain.

In 1987 he married Anna Ståhl. They have two children together, born in 1989 and 1995. In 1999 Carlsson and Ståhl separated. For almost 20 years Carlsson has not only lived in Småland, but also temporarily in Stockholm with his partner Larissa Stenlander, an artist. Carlsson's studio is unchanged in Långasjö in his parents' house, he uses the tranquility of the home environment, which he made tangible as an essential element in his works over several decades. The dynamism of Stockholm and life in a Scandinavian city led to a change in the choice of motifs due to different impulses for motifs and forms of design. The proximity to hyperrealism , which was already indicated in his early works, is unmistakable.

plant

Tommy TC Carlsson received his first award at the age of 16 with the Prize of the Emmaboda Art Association. Basic artistic training took place at the Öland Art School in the areas of painting, graphics, drawing and sculpture. From the beginning, Tommy Carlsson devoted himself to still life painting. He perfected his painting technique on the basis of the work of Dutch painters of the 17th century and thus created the basis for experiencing the three-dimensional effect of his oil paintings. In the first few years he varied the objects and motifs until glass objects, enamel containers, tin vessels, fruits and vegetables emerged as the focus. These were often presented on wooden tables and chairs, sometimes on open ground and in front of increasingly blurred backgrounds.

Carlsson experimented with light and shadow and dared to work on difficult details such as reflective glass, reflective metal as well as liquids, egg yolks and their formation in drops. At the same time, he studied the properties of the colors he used, their effect in different lighting conditions and the influence of light and age in order to ensure that the desired effect not only occurs at the moment the painting is created, but also lasts over time.

On the basis of this perfect craftsmanship, Tommy Carlsson changed the motifs, no longer allowing them to appear on backgrounds, but turned them into objects. The canvas itself with its surface and its sides becomes an object, a wooden panel, a cupboard, a door, a tin box, a metal plate, a balloon. Signs of use often adhere to them as traces of life, be it scratches, scrapes, rust, dents or fingerprints. In this way, objects should come to life through the influences that life, their use and time have left on them. Their combination gives his works surrealistic traits.

Carlsson's goal is to stimulate the viewer's imagination. It is up to him to let the picture tell its story or to discover a story in it. The choice of motif makes it possible to see symbols in them and interpret them in their message. The boundaries between reality and fiction are blurring, because the intentional plasticity of the works deceives the beholder. It should irritate him, induce him to take other positions of inspection in order to discover a supposed reality and truth. Carlsson deliberately crosses the border with trompe l'œil painting and takes up the historical traditions of simulating a non-existent spatiality and building up illusions.

In addition to the clear focus on painting in oil, which as a material offers special conditions to enable naturalistic effects of motifs, Carlsson has also created various lithographs , all based on the model of his own oil paintings. Here, too, he succeeds in creating a sculptural, realistic design.

Painting style

Carlsson's oil paintings fit into a long history of realistic, naturalistic and illusionistic works of art that began in antiquity. In 17th century Dutch painting , the representation of still lifes with the most demanding motifs in the center of a work or as the subject of a larger composition was perfected. Tommy Carlsson has adapted the painting technique on which this art movement is based with numerous layers of paint on top of one another. First he applied this technique to objects that - similar to earlier still lifes - were arranged on surfaces. Increasingly, he concentrated on the objects themselves, dispensed with backgrounds or made the wall on which his paintings hang as the background of his objects. Unlike in the developed since the mid-20th century art objects Carlsson declared non-existent objects of art object, but creates with canvas and oil paint paintings - and their motives - appear as separate items.

Carlsson sees himself as a modern representative of trompe l'œil painting, which reached a high point in the 17th century with Dutch paintings and was also taken up by Swedish artists, but has since revived the current art scene again and again. Some of Gerhard Richter's works are particularly noteworthy examples of the lively expression of trompe l'oeil painting in modern art. At Carlsson, the observer is deceived in a variety of ways and on different levels. Even the canvas itself becomes a material, a subsurface, transforms into another, desired material. The traces on it increase the illusion, they create the illusion of age and wear and tear. Openings appear real, invite you to look in and through. Objects seem to be tangible. Illusion and reality compete with each other. In doing so, he uses his ability to insert photorealistic elements into his work, and has thus become an important representative of hyperrealistic painting , with a recognizable proximity to Pop Art .

Humor plays a special role in Carlsson's works. Just as a humorist consciously chooses every word, nothing in Carlsson's paintings is left to chance. It is up to the beholder to discover the relevant details, the inscription on the pencil, the note on the sheet pinned to the wooden wall, the drop on the glass, the combination on the torn piece of paper on the safe, the fibrous tape that attaches a colorful balloon fixed with a wooden band.

Awards

• 1974: Prize of the Emmaboda Art Association
• 1983: Special price in the competition “Young Artists in Sweden”
• 1984: Scholarship from the municipality of Emmaboda
• 1988: Second prize in the “Vecko Revyn - Dekorima” competition

Exhibitions

• Various group exhibitions since 1981
• Participation in Art Fair Stockholm (2000 to 2005) and Art Fair Sollentuna (Sweden, 2006-2008)
• Participation in Hamburg Art Week 2011 and Hamburg Art Week 2012

• Approx. 70 own exhibitions since 1983
• Exhibitions in Hamburg in 1990, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1997, 2001 and 2009
• 1996 Exhibition in "The American Swedish Institute", Minneapolis (USA)
• a total of over 150 solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad.

reception

In the works of Tommy TC Carlsson, different art styles of past eras and the present come together. The references to realism as an art based on visible things are unmistakable, the detailed naturalism in the representation becomes an unconditional claim in Carlsson's works, which can be viewed critically. With this, Carlsson touches the border to photorealism . Trompe-l'œil meets his style as an expression of classical styles and thus places his work in a tradition that extends into modern times, as current exhibitions in recent years show. The symbolic references of his works connect his works with elements of symbolism , which in turn led to surrealism . The precision of the representation of his objects makes him a representative of hyperrealism , the choice of objects and their colorfulness bring him close to Pop Art .

literature

• Bärbel Hedinger : Deceptively real. Illusion and Reality in Art, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-7774-2431-6
• Astrid Lindgren: The disappeared land, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-7891-1940-7
• Astrid Lindgren, Margareta Strömstedt, Jan-Hugo Normann: Mein Småland, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-7891-6039-3
• Mereth Lindgren, Louise Lyberg, Birgitta Sandström, Anna Greta Wahlberg: Svensk Konsthistoria, Kristianstad 2002, ISBN 91-87896-52-4
• Vilhelm Moberg: The novel from the emigrants, Volume 1: The emigrants, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-7632-3631-7
• Vilhelm Moberg: The novel from the emigrants, Volume 2: In the New World, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-7632-3632-5
• Vilhelm Moberg: The novel from the emigrants, Volume 3: The settlers, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-7632-3633-3
• Vilhelm Moberg: The novel from the emigrants, Volume 4: The last letter to Sweden, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-7632-3634-1
• Karen Sidén: LURA ÖGAT Fem seklers bländverk, Stockholm 2008, ISBN 978-91-7100-776-6
• Martina Sitt, Hubertus Gaßner (ed.): Still life from five centuries, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7774-4195-5
• Renate Trnek: The Dutch paintings of the 17th century, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar, Böhlau 1992, ISBN 3-205-05408-3

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Liv Ullmann: "Scenes of a Life", pp. 271 and 272
2. ↑ Langasjö Sockens Hembygdsförening and Langasjö Sockenrad (eds.): Langasjökrönika 2012 . 2012, ISBN 978-91-637-1750-5 , pp. 54-58 .
3. ↑ Langasjö Sockens Hembygdsföreningen and Langasjö Sockenrad (eds.): Langasjökröniken 2012 . 2012, p. 56 .
4. ^ Swedish consulates. In: AktivSchweden. Retrieved March 10, 2019 . 
5. ^ American Swedish Institute. Retrieved September 9, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Musée du Trompe l'Oeil et du Décor Peint. Retrieved March 10, 2019 (French). 
7. ↑ Art of Deception from Trompe-l'oeil to Virtual Reality. In: Art in Words. Retrieved March 10, 2019 . 
8. ↑ z. B. as a trompe l'oeil painter: Samuel van Hoogstraten, 1627–1678, in: The Dutch Paintings of the 17th Century, p. 235 ff
9. ↑ cf. z. B. Johann Klopper, Christian Thum, in: Svensk Konsthistoria, pp. 249 and 250
10. ↑ cf. z. B. Lars Henning Boman, Carl Hofverberg, Hindric Sebastian Sommar, Theodor Lundh, in: Lura ögat, pp. 27, 28, 29, 30, 32
11. ↑ z. B. Ylva Ogland, b. 1974, and Philip von Schantz, 1992-1998, in: Lura ögat, pp. 19, 42, 42
12. ↑ z. B. Gerhard Richter, b. 1932, and Thomas Demand, b. 1964, in: Deceptively real. Illusion and Reality in Art, pp. 179, 203 and 205
13. ^ Roberta Smith: Art: At Two Galleries, Gerhard Richter Works . In: The New York Times . March 13, 1987, ISSN  0362-4331 ( online [accessed March 10, 2019]).
14. ^ Tommy TC Carlsson. Retrieved March 10, 2019 . 
15. ↑ Exhibition “Lura ögat”, National Museum Stockholm, 2008/2009 Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
16. ↑ Exhibition “Deceptively Real. Illusion and Reality in Art ", Bucerius Kunst Forum Hamburg, 2010 [1]
17. ↑ Exhibition “Still life from five centuries”, Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2008 Archived copy ( memento of the original from June 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.