Shrubs
Linus Lohmann
Listasalur Mosfellsbæjar
31. maí - 27. júní 2025
As a species we’re enthralled by pattern. Our feverish minds are constantly—and unintentionally—
finding form in the formless. The world becomes populated by the spectres of our thoughts:
animals appear in the clouds, faces loom from the foliage of a shrub, and childhood trauma lurks
in Rorschach tests. Our thoughts become imprinted on the world around us through the act of
looking. Linus Lohmann’s exhibition at Listasalur Mosfellsbæjar is borne of these restless ways the
world appears to us and is a compelling argument for perception as being far from passive.
Central to the exhibition are a series of drawings made by Linus’ unique drawing method. Linus
has a quixotic nature toward problem solving. The mechanical drawing tool he invented to make
these drawings—almost a tattoo gun for paper—is very much evidence of this. He is bestowed
with a material ingenuity, an ability informed by the mechanics of printing and nonconformist
craftsmanship. With his drawing apparatus he creates amorphous clouds of coloured dots. They
resemble swirling constellations or condensing clouds of colour, within which we instinctively see
expansive landscapes, galaxies forming, or the camouflaged fragments of something barely there.
Upon another wall are a series of drawings, Nearly Nature. These works are smaller in form and
made in a more traditional manner of grease pencil on paper. They nonetheless inhabit a similar
terrain of representational ambiguity as his other drawings. However, as their title suggests, these
appear to be derived from nature. Perhaps not the nature of remote wilderness but more likely
those places where nature and urbanity abutt one another. The “nearly” in the drawings’ title is
more likely to refer to a stretch of roadside brush beaten down in places by either the movements
of animals or humans. These are the liminal, ambiguous spaces of the modern world, where nature
persists or stealthily reclaims its place. And the drawings assert their own uncertainty; a frenetic
accumulation of lines could suggest rock faces or weathered shrubs. The drawings are precisely on
the edge of representation, what appears to be a flowering bush could just as much be an eruption
of coral. The work confounds the viewer, if a drawing can be seen as many things can it truly be of
anything?
A third set of ten drawings are also included in Shrubs. These could feel like something of a
convergence of the two other drawing series in the exhibition. They contain similar gestural
markings as seen in Nearly Nature but also include distinctive colour elements. However these
colour fields emerge almost shapeless on the page: colour without form, the pure idea of colour.
The drawn marks are even more glyph-like than in Linus’ other work, it is as if the forms in the work
are retreating to leave only an elemental presence.
A wooden sculptural form torques, twists and contorts on the ground between these sets of
drawings. Made from bent timber this is another example of Linus’ material intelligence. It was
created through a process of steam bending the wood. However, Linus chose to develop his
own method to do this rather than slavishly following craft traditions. This allowed the sculpture
to have a crude, almost brutish appearance. The sculpture’s form reflects the concerns of the
drawings: appearing like a glyph from which meaning has been pulled out. Its form of construction
also relates to dismissed elements of our societal surroundings: like finding an industrial machine
abandoned in a field. The world is inhabited by such objects that previously had utility but the act
of being disposed of detaches them from their context of use and leaves them unmoored from
that which gives them meaning.
Linus’ exhibition is an evocative consideration of the ways in which meaning arises and falls away
through the act of looking. It is a process which is both intrinsically subjective but also entirely
dependent upon our place in the world.
Text Gavin Morrison
Shrubs
Linus Lohmann
Listasalur Mosfellsbæjar
31. maí - 27. júní 2025
As a species we’re enthralled by pattern. Our feverish minds are constantly—and unintentionally—
finding form in the formless. The world becomes populated by the spectres of our thoughts:
animals appear in the clouds, faces loom from the foliage of a shrub, and childhood trauma lurks
in Rorschach tests. Our thoughts become imprinted on the world around us through the act of
looking. Linus Lohmann’s exhibition at Listasalur Mosfellsbæjar is borne of these restless ways the
world appears to us and is a compelling argument for perception as being far from passive.
Central to the exhibition are a series of drawings made by Linus’ unique drawing method. Linus
has a quixotic nature toward problem solving. The mechanical drawing tool he invented to make
these drawings—almost a tattoo gun for paper—is very much evidence of this. He is bestowed
with a material ingenuity, an ability informed by the mechanics of printing and nonconformist
craftsmanship. With his drawing apparatus he creates amorphous clouds of coloured dots. They
resemble swirling constellations or condensing clouds of colour, within which we instinctively see
expansive landscapes, galaxies forming, or the camouflaged fragments of something barely there.
Upon another wall are a series of drawings, Nearly Nature. These works are smaller in form and
made in a more traditional manner of grease pencil on paper. They nonetheless inhabit a similar
terrain of representational ambiguity as his other drawings. However, as their title suggests, these
appear to be derived from nature. Perhaps not the nature of remote wilderness but more likely
those places where nature and urbanity abutt one another. The “nearly” in the drawings’ title is
more likely to refer to a stretch of roadside brush beaten down in places by either the movements
of animals or humans. These are the liminal, ambiguous spaces of the modern world, where nature
persists or stealthily reclaims its place. And the drawings assert their own uncertainty; a frenetic
accumulation of lines could suggest rock faces or weathered shrubs. The drawings are precisely on
the edge of representation, what appears to be a flowering bush could just as much be an eruption
of coral. The work confounds the viewer, if a drawing can be seen as many things can it truly be of
anything?
A third set of ten drawings are also included in Shrubs. These could feel like something of a
convergence of the two other drawing series in the exhibition. They contain similar gestural
markings as seen in Nearly Nature but also include distinctive colour elements. However these
colour fields emerge almost shapeless on the page: colour without form, the pure idea of colour.
The drawn marks are even more glyph-like than in Linus’ other work, it is as if the forms in the work
are retreating to leave only an elemental presence.
A wooden sculptural form torques, twists and contorts on the ground between these sets of
drawings. Made from bent timber this is another example of Linus’ material intelligence. It was
created through a process of steam bending the wood. However, Linus chose to develop his
own method to do this rather than slavishly following craft traditions. This allowed the sculpture
to have a crude, almost brutish appearance. The sculpture’s form reflects the concerns of the
drawings: appearing like a glyph from which meaning has been pulled out. Its form of construction
also relates to dismissed elements of our societal surroundings: like finding an industrial machine
abandoned in a field. The world is inhabited by such objects that previously had utility but the act
of being disposed of detaches them from their context of use and leaves them unmoored from
that which gives them meaning.
Linus’ exhibition is an evocative consideration of the ways in which meaning arises and falls away
through the act of looking. It is a process which is both intrinsically subjective but also entirely
dependent upon our place in the world.
Text Gavin Morrison