Waldén's paintings depict a world of recognizable lineage; it is the world that transformed art at the beginning of the last century. His muted range of colours and pencil like tones imbue the works with alien qualities, but the re-animation of the angular experiments of Lissitzky or the idealism of the De Stijl are not called forth to serve style or to refute modernist projects. The paintings present us with portraits of those very moments in painting. They exude humility and quietude rather than the ferocity of their initial incarnations, yet keep guarded a secret power. These portraits capture a moment in early modernism that now stands accused.
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Like the legacy of Brutalism that disintegrated with the urban decay that it is associated with, the heritage of European modernism has been long rejected and submitted to erosion by reduction to graphic style. In Walden's work, these phantom tropes have returned through strange alchemies. Their arrangements indicate a lost knowledge that has left traces upon them, a magical modernism. |
In these pieces the sense of accusation is reflected from them and on to us. It is we who are charged with passive complicity in their former failures. |
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 Andreas Waldén was born in Sweden |