Untitled

Throughout his diverse career, Swedish artist Oyvind Fahlstrom produced work in film, performance, installation, sculpture, print, painting and poetry. He was an acute observer of global political events, working between the tensions of artistic form and political content.  His 1954 manifesto for concrete poetry advocated language as concrete matter and at that time he turned to purely using the term “signification characteristic forms” – to propose relationships between visual and verbal signs. Untitled 1958, suggests this macro universe of signs and symbol. In 1958, the Moderna Museet opened in Stockholm, led by Pontus Hultén, and it was through this exhibition, “Moment in Art” that Fahlstrom met Robert Rauschenberg, Billy Klüver (the Swedish engineer who founded E.A.T., Experiments in Art and Technology), Jean Tinguely, and Niki de Saint Phalle.

A subsequent move to New York in 1961 put Fahlstrom in the epicenter of this new art scene where he continued to work in film, performance, and three dimensional work. From 1962 to 1968 Fahlstrom was one of the most active proponents of happenings in New York, Stochholm and Paris, and presented the iconic “Kisses Sweeter than Wine” for the legendary sponsored Nine Evenings at the Armory in 1966.