Lars Daniel Rehn

In Residence:
September 25, 2019 - October 25, 2019
Discipline:
Visual Art
Country:
Sweden

Lars Daniel Rehn (b. 1974, Sweden) is a visual artist, noted for his humorous and detailed paintings depicting a world from a rather dystopic perspective.

I grew up in a pretty grey industrial town called Borlänge in the country of Dalarna, Sweden. My childhood interests were fish tanks, race cars and video games. A world full of details and moods mostly. In school I was the bullied one, but I was also the funny guy during drawing class. As I was drawing I always told a story and made sound effects with my mouth which resulted in a little fan crowd hanging over my shoulders as the lecture went on. My real fascination for arts started after our town became invaded by a bunch of graffiti writers from a much bigger town a couple of hours drive west from Borlänge. I was 14 and had never seen anything like it before. I thought it had it all: humor, colors, swag, and attitude all at the same time. I just had to start doing that. Within the process of learning graffiti, I developed a wide range of artistic assets that drew my attention closer and closer to “real art” and, at 18 years of age, I attended my first art school. Art school to me was very much just an exercise towards the academies in everything we did, and I did not want to do that kind of art. I became rebellious and did the opposite. Looking back on it, I think that I made a good decision and kept developing my own individual yet contemporary language. – Lars Daniel Rehn

Lars Daniel Rehn is a 2019 Inga Maren Otto Fellow at The Watermill Center.

Paranormal Behavior ( The Adventures Of A Time Traveller )

I have a belief that we exist together in several parallel consciousness. That we transcend in and out of different time frames when we sleep and dream and that we have the ability to train our brain to see beyond the reality that we know of.

Looking into the details of my works, and if you get to know the story line, you can see that some of the inhabitants have been able to travel in time. The more they travel the more deranged they get. They are seen as paranormal, and their behavior is looked at as very controversial by the religious high priests and are put in prison when caught in plain sight.

image:  Lars Daniel Rehn. Pool Position. 60cm x 60cm. Acrylic on MDF (with black light). 2013
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