Scrap metal legends
Elizabeth Heather
Olle Jonsson used to be a farmer, but when milk prices crashed in Sweden in the 1990s, he sold all his stock, land, equipment, and animals to start a new kind of cultivation: sculpture. His rickety, rusty giant works have an appropriate connection to the land and its ancient stories. It took him three years to make, from scrap metals, his three giants–each one 30-foot tall and 16 tons. They are named Bock, Önne, and Starkotter, after three giants in one of the legends of Hälsingland and the jätta–the giants who inhabited the earth before humans. Some of these giants were so mighty that they changed the landscape itself: one legend tells how one of Sweden’s biggest lakes, the Vänern, was made when a giant ripped a fistful of earth from the ground. Jonsson’s source material for his three giants is the Battle of the Alfta Giants.
This is how the tale goes: Bock, Önne, and Starkotter were the first settlers of the forests of Alfta, and each of them believed that he alone should be ruler of the region, so all three become enemies. They fought, but eventually it took a cruel collaboration to end the stalemate: Starkotter and Önne teamed up to kill Bock. But even then, greed ensured that matters were not settled: Starkotter and Önne became enemies again, Önne fled and only returned to forests years later when he heard of Starkotter’s death.
Jonsson set up the sculptures overlooking the town of Alfta, and locals loved to see their legend come to life. Now, in Berliner Kunstprojekt gallery, Jonsson is exhibiting scale models, and preliminary sketches, and soulful paintings of these intimidating, yet still rather goofy looking giants. They are all head and no body, and they balance precariously on the end of poles with chains coiling up them. Their heads seem to be made of enormous old oil tanks, and they have an ellipse of metal for a mouth, a sharp wedge for a nose, a white oval for their single eye, and a wheel for their ears.
The giants have an earthy, authentic feel. The discarded and once meaningless scap materials have been manipulated and crafted together to assume a larger purpose: an embodiment of the mythical creatures who used to exist only in the imagination. Jonsson’s urge to act out these legends and play with their protagonists is an enchanting, child-like impulse. It’s as though Jonsson felt an urge to relive an adolescent memory and sensed an overwhelming desire to resurrect the concept so he could create what was once so whimsical and far off into the imagination.
But the violence of the battle itself is not apparent when examining the sculptures, as there is no indication of blood, guts, or scarring. In their facial expressions too, there isn’t the slightest animosity. The focus appears to be on the innocence and individualism of each creature, as if they have been thrust almost unknowingly into this battle. It seems that Jonsson finds greater interest in each of them individually, rather than the battle and story as a whole. Bock, Önne, and Starkotter each have a different outlook, so it is appropriate that their eyes–they only have one each–proves to be the most alluring feature. For example. the eye of Bock looks shifty, whereas Starkotter looks more weary and timid. Each creation exhibits distinct characteristics from one another, but the feeling of clumsy, unwieldy power unites them.
If the sculptures are alive outside the gallery, Jonsson has also found a way to animate the indoor space with the ancient dramas of the giants. In a series of rich, dark paintings, Bock, Önne, and Starkotter appear in different configurations, staring at each other both menacingly and benignly.
Along with earthy pictures of flowers, Jonsson also dabbles in more abstract work: something that might be, but is probably not, a sun and a wheelbarrow, and something that resembles a mangled, stretche out bicycle.
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Jonsson has also made an eight-ton sculpture called Brake, which was displayed near the Royal Palace in Stockholm. Wood models of the cute–but probably vicious dog–are on display at Berliner Kunstprojeckts. The little dog is pert and sprightly, in every physical detail. His torso is a spring, his head the shovels of a digger, and he looks up, perhaps adoringly at his master, or perhaps waiting to bite a stranger.
