Per Enokssons paintings start with an empty canvas. Soon, a variety of anthropomorphic creatures, the flora and fauna of the very North of Sweden, as well as fragments of this septentrional landscape populate this void. Each painting holds its own specific narrative, built up by these figurative elements, juxtaposed and superimposed on the surface, or fading back into the void. In this process the work goes from being an idea of a painting to become a painting in its own right. Enokssons works stems from a set of real experiences of an un-romantic Nature and of hardships in contemporary life often with a personal twist, such as gluten intolerance or the differences between smaller and bigger boys in school.
A series of smaller works, painted on panels from old Formica school desks, give away some secrets on how these stories were once generated. One of these paintings, Nollor slukas av havet ("Noughts devoured by the sea"), 2001, gives a hint of boredom experienced in class and the strict hierarchy in school. A line of noughts is forced off the ladder of a graded scale to end up in a thinly pencilled sea beside a pirates ship. Obviously the noughts stand for all the 'Nobodies' who could not make it in school neither with the grades nor with the babes. At first glance, the painting seems to have been scribbled one slow afternoon in the classroom a long time ago with some elements starting out as mere found glue stains, but on closer inspection it reveals a more complicated story filled with an equal amount of humour and despair. In one of the large paintings, Hobbyspecialisten ("The Hobby Specialist"), the center is dominated by a portrait of a man. Around him and inside his decorated body symbols of his main interests hover, a hook for fishing, a pipe for smoking and last but not least a Munch-like woman representing his passion for knocking up girls. The woman is uncomfortably pushed up against the inside of a man's head. The big mans soul is tormented; and in spite of all references to the banality of contemporary life his closest relative in art history is Christ. It is a mans world with all its pros and cons but rendered in fluent garlands of girlish pink and red.
Per Enoksson paints in a narrative and figurative tradition that easily bridges the cultural differences between modern cosmopolitan life and the Laplander life of his youth. The narrative he creates cleverly skates around rigid concepts of what elements belong to what culture and the strength of his paintings is their ability to be universal.
Per Enoksson is born in the Lapland municipality of Tärnaby, Sweden, in 1965. 1989-93 he attended the Academy of Art in Oslo, Norway and 1993-94 the Royal Academy of Art, Stockholm and the Academy of Art, Umeå. He lives and works in Umeå. In 2000 he took part in the exhibition "Socialisms" at Bildmuseet, Umeå.
