The joint exhibition ”Habitat” by Simon Dahlgren Strååt and David Permén is based on conversations and thoughts exchanged between the artists over several years. Through various media – sculpture, painting, photography and video – two different but related artistic practices emerge, raising questions on how we perceive reality and the creation of identities. Their work contains multiple layers of interpretations, striking on an exploratory, sometimes almost surreal experience.

In Simon Dahlgren Strååt’s imagery, there is a search for places and memories, intertwining both historical and contemporary references. It is as if he is travelling through an inner landscape, moving between different environments, eras and spatiality. The imagery seems sometimes lost in a dreamlike narrative and appears as a scenic backdrop, in other works the surface is filled with traces and patterns or abstract, organic forms. He describes the painterly process as a desire to explore the relationship between perception and interpretation, which he believes is in constant negotiation. The challenge is to discover new worlds and to capture the viewer as part of that spatiality.

Poetic and compelling encounters occur in Dahlgren Strååt’s scenic and dreamy imagery and David Permén’s sculptural exploration of reality. Both seem to ask the question: what does authenticity mean?

Simon Dahlgren Strååt was born in 1984 in Stockholm, where he still lives and works. He has studied at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. David Permén was born in 1979 in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Småland and Stockholm. He has studied at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.

Text: Eva-Lotta Flach

Photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger