Marcus Mårtenson – Self promote or die

Marcus Mårtenson's artistic practice addresses contemporary issues such as consumption, surveillance and social media. References from capitalist mass culture are transformed in Mårtenson's hands into scathing social criticism. The works represent a network of thoughts and ideas focusing on the existential crisis of the modern, constantly connected human being.

Like the pop artists of the 1960s, Mårtenson finds his motifs in the banal obsession with surface - an iconography recognisable from neon signs, comic books and advertising images. By mixing high and low in an irreverent play on the premises of Art with a capital K, his work follows in a postmodernist tradition inspired by Baudrillard's theory of simulacra. Mårtenson makes the viewer aware of the difference between reality and mediality. With each new layer of representation, humans get further and further away from real meaning, and eventually only artificial simulation remains in a kind of self-referential hyperreality.

Self Promote or Die is designed as a loud billboard with drastic letters in yellow on a glittery blue background. The graphic design interacts with the content of the words in a cynical, political satire of a neoliberal social order where the law of the jungle prevails.

– There is no backstage anymore, everything you do should be posted and rated in a gamified society. You are your brand, says Mårtenson.

The work #helloeveryone shows an absurd, incoherent stream of nonsense words. With sharp irony, Mårtenson criticises the cacophony of meaningless information that bombards the connected human being. Idealised images that seduce, but which inevitably lead the individual on erroneous paths that fragment and alienate the self.

Man's constant preoccupation with playing a role in front of others on social media is at the centre of the work Toughness. Classic symbols such as the skull and knife become performative signs intended to create an image of toughness. As simulacra, they do not refer to an actual reality, but to the image the wearer wants to express.

Together, the individual works depict a dystopian worldview - visual reflections of the absurd preoccupation with image and success in contemporary society.

Marcus Mårtenson (born 1972) lives and works in Stockholm. He has studied at Idun Lovén Art School, Basis Art School, and has a Bachelor's degree in Religious Studies. Exhibitions at Galleri Forsblom (Stockholm and Helsinki), Lars Bohman Gallery (Stockholm), Angelica Knäpper Gallery (Stockholm), Linköpings konsthall and Gallery Midori (Tokyo) among many others. Mårtenson's works are represented in private collections and the Swedish Public Art Association (SAK).

The exhibition is on display at Nordiska Galleriet until 2 December 2020.

For questions about viewing and buying artworks, please contact Ditte, Head of Art.
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Written by: Lina Aastrup

Photo: Fredrik Sandin Carlsson