Meta Isæus-Berlin, “There is no Time in the Dream”

Umeå, 17.10–14.11  2013

When Swedish artists Meta Isæus-Berlin broke through in the 90’s, she quickly became one of Swedens most prominent artists, participating in numerous international biennials, with a vast solo exhibition at Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm in 2006. Following her latest exhibitions at the Thiel Gallery in Stockholm, and the retrospective exhibitions at the Bohuslän Museum and Konsthallen Passagen in Linköping, she is now presenting the latest chapter in her ever-growing mythological web.

In the exhibition “There Is No Time In the Dream” at Galleri Andersson/ Sandström in Umeå, Isæus-Berlin’s is commenting the classical notion that there is a magical place from which stories come. In this exhibition, such places are depicted with a dissolved imagery, because regardless of whether we are gazing at works such as “Writer’s Den”, “The World’s Best Hiding Place” or “Where It Happens − The Poet’s Couch”, the creative source inevitably stems from an inner room. It takes place in this timeless place, shaped by the memories and impressions that each individual has experienced. The painting “A Room of One’s Own”, named after a Virginia Woolf novel, is dealing with precisely that individual sanctuary, constituted by such a room.

Meta Isæus-Berlin shares that Salvador Dali once said that his favourite journey was the one from the bedroom to the bathroom. She continues: “He believed that physical travel was redundant, since so much was always going on inside of him, even in the most trivial of moments. I feel a strong kinship with this stance. However, I am aware of that, in order to be preserved, this inner room needs to be nurtured actively. It is a way to affirm the elasticity of one’s personality, to better appreciate existential values, of both large and small matters.”

In this exhibition, several of the prominent qualitites within Isæus-Berlin’s oeuvre are anchored. Her suggestive scenes tell stories about the symbolic value in the recognizable, works teeming with assertion of memories and experiences. In ”There Is No Time In the Dream”, Isæus-Berlin explores her associative trajectories to the fullest, in order to explore their initial origin.