Swans – Visions of light and darkness
Charlotte Fröling often looks for inspiration for her motifs in art history and her photographs have a painterly quality. Starting from a specific subject she works in series in which, for many months, she will collect material, visit different sites, create compositions and study the light and the weather conditions. It is not the motif as such that is her primary concern but the form, the composition and. above all, the light that she is constantly looking for and that she returns to. Over the years the content of her visual images has been reduced and the motifs have become increasingly abstracted. The relation between light and darkness becomes increasingly apparent.
Swans are a recurrent subject in the history of art and have been interpreted in many different ways. In Greek mythology the god Zeus transforms himself into a swan when he senses erotic desire for queen Leda. In his paintings the 18th century French artist François Boucher returned to the dramatic scene in which the swan symbolized both irresistible desire and a threatening being. In one of René Magritte’s best known works L'art de la conversation, in a nocturnal scene he has painted two swans that symbolize eternity and ever-present love.
The swan is also a symbol for the supersensual aspect of many mythologies and religions. In Hinduism, for example, the swan is Brahma’s method of motion, symbolizing the soul. and for Hilma af Klint, with her interest in theosophy, the swan was a central motif. In the course of numerous spiritual séances and spiritist gatherings, between 1906 and 1915 she created her Paintings for the Temple, a suite of 193 paintings in series and groups in which the word temple can rather be read as a metaphor for spiritual development. The last of her paintings featured the swan motif with the swans in various degrees of abstraction in which she studied polarity by means of a black and a white swan striving to find unity.
One cold January morning some years ago Charlotte walked through a wintry Stockholm and caught sight of a pair of white swans in the dark water. This was the origin of her series entitled Swans – Visions of light and darkness. Over a long period she made a detailed study of swans photographing them at regular intervals. Her view of swans as beautiful and monogamous birds changed as time passed. Swans turned out to be much more complex than that. It is true that swans have a partner for life but only if this leads to progeny. Failing this, they abandon each other and search for new mates. Initially the sexual act of swans is a beautiful and sensitive dance until, at the instant of mating, the male bird forces his mate down beneath the surface of the water. In other matters the pair are commendably equal with both partners sharing responsibility for brooding and, often very violently and aggressively defending their territory against intruders.
In her series of Swans – Visions of light and darkness, the behaviour of the swans can be seen in a more universal perspective. Light contrasting with darkness, community contra solitariness. Even when the swans are together they appear as being solitary, enclosed within themselves, vulnerability contrasting with strength. As well as the dramatically visual aspect in which the light forms appear clearly as they contrast with the darker aspects, the images communicate an existential depth regarding life’s fragility.
Lena Ryden, Bukowskis
