Swedish multidisciplinary graphic designer and art director, Linus Bronge, has adopted the best ever approach to get his viewers to think about serious stuff: playfulness. Currently studying Visual Communication at Beckmans College of Design, the emerging artist has already awed us with his talent for getting everyone to pay attention to his work and drift into reflection and afterthought.

‘Mass and Space’ is particularly fun to look at, describing it on his website as: "...an ongoing project where I explore my visual language through abstract expressionism. It's a way for me to try visual ideas, play with different materials and experiment with shapes and compositions.” But I read so much more into it. To me, this particular work is a rebellion against expectations, a disruption of the art world’s ideas of right and wrong, good and bad.

Most artists try to reach, impress or confuse us with the subject matter represented within their work. Not Bronge though, he surprises us with the medium and materials themselves. When we are little kids at school, we are constantly told to stay in the lines – something I still find impossible (haven’t got that hand-eye coordination happening yet). The artist here revolts against this rule, literally blurring the lines, by making the frame part of the painting itself. Perhaps a play on what is edge, “edgy”, a surprise, a trick, and a game.

Bronge’s ‘Analogue Spam’ carries out this tone of smart and fun. “One of the most peculiar ways of advertising is spam. As design students, we researched huge amounts of spam and analyzed its aesthetics. We designed posters consisting of the most common spam messages out there and imitated the process of a real spam message, trying to make analogue spam.”

We understand paper. We can scrunch it, rip it up, and make origami, hats and planes with it. We don’t quite fully understand the Internet, though we love it and thank the gods who created it. In such a finate world we have this thing that is free and endless, but somewhat infinite, forever. ‘Analogue Spam’ is less threatening than its digital inspiration, which has the ability to send us to digital blackholes and computer graves. How much control do we have over the technology we surround ourselves with?

Not unlike an outstanding educator, Bronge gets us to interrogate entire systems while comforting us with safe, familiar and amusing approaches.

http://www.linusbronge.com

Words / Ana Gomides