Artist: Carl Hammoud

Galleri Magnus Karlsson presents Carl Hammoud’s seventh solo exhibition at the gallery; A Way Not to Explore the Past, But to Manipulate the Present.

The exhibition presents new paintings and drawings with an intentionally rich variety of motifs, such as landscapes, interiors, and still lifes. The new works are sourced from Hammoud’s own snapshots, found photographs, illuminated still lifes, and digital collages.

The exhibition’s lengthy title is intended to both mislead and invite deeper interpretation. The word ”manipulate” can refer to how one masters something by hand, but also to the cognitive influence on a person or an event. For Hammoud, studio work often involves balancing an intuitive process while considering history and the content of the works. ”I think it can be likened to an intellectual reasoning, where the relevance of the source material underscores a line of thought that can be tested against the arbitrariness of the present. The process oscillates between intention and outcome, and one of the more crucial questions is how much should be revealed.”

The painting Melpomene shows a close-up of a few Japanese anemones that grow outside the artist’s studio. The flowers face straight ahead and meet the viewer's gaze. If we look at the picture for a moment, a simple face appears. Once we have perceived the face, it is impossible to return to the original, pure floral motif. Hammoud has manipulated the source image by enhancing certain shadows and highlights, and by choosing a section that shows only what is necessary for the illusion.

I Can Hear the Dust Collecting on the Fridge That Doesn’t Work depicts a shelving system with abandoned sorting compartments, where paper documents lie waiting to be catalogued. The light is dim and the colors muted. We seem to be witnessing a task that has been completed for the day, or left to never be resumed again. A kind of betrayal of an order we once promised. A similar image composition, but with a different motif, echoes in one of the exhibition’s smaller works, 04:59. Here, a tree is portrayed during sunrise. The branches stretch toward the edges of the panel and seem to press against the limitations of the format. A motif that evokes the thought of a conflict between nature’s untamed energy and the human fixation on symmetrical systems.

Ways of Escape is a large book still life named after an autobiography by author Graham Greene. It captures books frozen in motion, with some of the pages turned open. Doors are painted on the covers and on some of the spreads. The painting can be read as a direct representation of the title and as an allegory of the intrinsic possibilities of literature.

Over the years, Hammoud’s artistic practice has consistently explored the built-in uncertainty of images by challenging our understanding of them while exploring the use of titles, perspectives and visual perception. The works, which are constructed with a kind of duality, should always be open to more than one interpretation.

Carl Hammoud, born in 1976, lives and works in Stockholm. He studied at the Valand Academy of Fine Arts in Gothenburg, Sweden, from 1999 to 2004 and has since exhibited at galleries and museums in Europe, Asia and the United States. Hammoud received the Åke Andrén Foundation Scholarship in 2012 and the Stenastiftelsen Cultural Scholarship in 2020. The Schumpeter Room at Stockholm School of Economics, a classroom with permanently installed paintings, a site specific printed linen wallpaper and complete color coordination of walls and furniture by Carl Hammoud, was inaugurated in 2024. His works are included in the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Malmö Art Museum, Eskilstuna Art Museum, Gävleborg County Museum, The British Museum, London, United Kingdom, and The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, USA. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, Sweden. His works are currently also on display in the exhibition Who Made the Grasshopper at Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin, USA.