"Uomo Confuso", is the profoundly confused and insecure modern Man, feeling a strange, bad conscience about his consumer rituals, and has become "neo-careful" in every way� The passive normative existence is a false comfort�
The idea for the "Stereophonic Dream" came in New York in the mid-eighties. The sleeping-tapes were a concrete evidence to Mr. Weckstrom of how we are moving into artificial worlds.
By cutting the contacts to the real world, one starts to live according to synthetic impulses. As a method of falling asleep, the tapes may be a better solution than pills, but one can also distinguish a trend of increasingly withdrawing into floating inside virtual realities - unaware of becoming a pawn in ready-made and concealed games.
The Extreme Tensions Between Materials
Traditional methods are no longer sufficient to describe the new human situation. Common to many of Bjorn Weckstrom's recent works are the surprising combination of materials far from each other. This is in itself to be seen as an image of our time: one is forced to compile a creative synthesis of all the shattered pieces of a disintegrating world. The challenge is overwhelming: only the creative act can bridge the split rifts, and continue the ambitious flight of the spirit.
The bronze "Equilibrist" on his circus unicycle, is androgynous and empty. There is plenty of balancing between family, work, relationships, hobbies as well as personal needs and external limitations.
In the "Homo Ludens" sculpture, the little bronze girl playing with a glass ball, the movement is in control, and the sculpture radiates the joy of playing.
The "Free fall", with its amputated arms, however, is in a helpless state in space, in an unstoppable movement one cannot influence. Only a bottomless fall into the unknown awaits.
In the "Thinker", bronze, glass and plastic meet to combine a special - possibly irritating - resonance. The reference to Rodin's work is clear, but Mr. Weckstrom's thinker resembles a youth of our time, lonely, introvert, someone experiencing an information revolution. The formation of the identity seems incomplete.The contact to others is established through outer signals, according to hairstyles etc., - the gangs function ruthlessly and sternly. The aggressiveness, and lacking sublimity of present young generations, that have never experienced war, fascinate Mr. Weckstrom. The untapped energies are directed towards oneself: piercings, rings and tattooing are practiced. Somehow it also contains a new kind of narcissism.
