Studio at the moment. Made this bigger explosion/tree. I like that symbol. When I was 15 I played in a punk band (at that time named Rabid Grannies) in Umeå and my friend Patrik Lindmark @patsible who played bass drew the cover for our first demo. He made this Jan Lööf inspired post-apocalyptic landscape with a nuclear explosion and ever since then it has been the image of that kind of explosion to me.

About a year ago I made a drawing of one that my friend and artist college Lisa Trogen Devgun @lisatrogendevgun  got. Some months after that I was in the NYC recidency at Mack Art Foundation and made another one as a small oil painting. Half a year after that, on the year day of the despicable atrocities of United States in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, renowned art critic Jerry Saltz posted a defense for the American actions on that day, saying any other option maybe would have been worse or some garbage like that, you can read for yourself and make up your mind.

The nuclear bomb is like a symbol for the terrorism of the major players of the global competition in-between nations. It is the strong arm of “the man”. A weapon sophisticated enough to never fall under the category of terror act since it takes a complex society to produce and deploy. Instead it is that beat down from the billy club to make sure people stay in line. A demonstration of absolute power. It is sick and gross.

I think I always liked that picture that Patrik drew because it somehow was drawn in the opposite representation of what that bomb is. Instead it was a silly cloud, somewhat toy-looking and cartoonish. It was Dante’s inferno roasted by a top act comedian.

This painting is a bit of a mess, doesn’t contain the same detail as my most recent paintings, but I think it suits it. For me it’s like a homage to that small cassette tape cover that we copied over and over again in our boyrooms mixed with the new cold war we live in today. A youth fantasy turned into reality.