The Remains of a Young Slain Mountain Troll by Patrik Bengtsson on Uddenskulptur 2022
Is there a lot of wind there? I ask the curator.
Yeah! It’s windy as hell there! He answers.
Good, I want to work with the wind, I answer.
The wind is needed for the group, the gathering, the army, the resistance movement, the avant-garde or the post-post avant-garde towering on top of the mountain. We only see the top of their flags, banners without symbols, without national colors or religious codes. Only Gold and Silver.
Emergency blankets, one color to cool one down, one to warm up.
Stands forty meters down and looks out to sea then up to the edge of the mountain. Thinking about when the ice sheet slid over Bohuslän. The sea shimmers, the flags shimmer like a little magic flame.
Sees the sea glittering as well as the flags at the top. The sun’s rays create the same effect on its surfaces,
So on a beautiful day when the poles have melted, the flags stand at a beach edge.
Do you get out your aggressions? Asks the artist friend
No, quite the contrary, you are completely subdued by the stone, I’m its servant. I answer.
I’m working on a rock for the first time. There is no experience of stonemasonry in me but I get a kick by the idea of owning the epithet stonemason and the experience that comes with that title.
Five, six tons, the more experienced sculptors on the stone yard guess that the stone weighs.
five, six more experienced sculptors on the stone yard advise me not to go on this stone considering how little time I have before it’s time to open.
But I know that I am looking for the process and the new experience more than a result. So I’m not taking in just that advice.
Granite. The bedrock. That which all rests upon. The stage for all the world’s dramas and events. Is now my material.
A feeling of discomfort comes when I brutally and intensively saw, drill and cut off pieces and pieces of the stone. Dismembers it like an animal that I believe I have the right to find, kill and get rid of the unwanted.
The body aches, hands numb, the feeling of discomfort disappears slowly after the stone-cutting becomes routine-based. I perform an action, hand and body work, muscles and joints are just performing. My mind is elsewhere.
Patrik your stone is alive, you have managed to bring life to the stone, says another artist friend.
Yes I know, I answer, because I have just killed and slaughtered a young mountain troll.
