Drømmeren – The Dreamer

by Halfdan Egedius

Showing a sullen, blackclad, Thorleiv Stadskleiv – an ethusiast of the supernatural – Egedius heeds death, insight, and second sight.

Looking at or slightly beyond the light slung through the window on the floor before him (mark: both insight and second sight see only indirectly), the Dreamer has no worries about comfortable posture and organized furniture – no worries of this world.

The seeming lack of embers in the hearth as well as the lack natural things, tell that the dwelling stands beyond or aside of time. In this deadroom, I see a selfscattered misbeing, I see an unawareness of both the now and belonging.

I think of the black masses that crowd worldcities today. I try to reckon the dozens of billions of hours spent indoors by man each day. I think of man's growing need to consume amusement and distraction. I see not only brooding insight, but also this time's deeply imbedded breach between self and world.

Painting woeful creativity, and woeful creativity itself, are not new. However I think they both may be particularly contemporary and typically modern. That is to say, they mark the hunched and rational withdrawl of the self, the break from work with and in nature.

We are living through a stopgap, a shift – 'tmaybe we need more insight, more thought, a greater rift between ourselves and nature, to come to the next time and to become modern again.