from "In search for the lost self", Bonniers Konsthall (by Sinziana Ravini):
"Gustav Sparr is both a collector and sampler of literature. The protagonist of his animated image worlds resemble him. Doppelgangers and multiple personalities guide us in and out of picture puzzle-like narrations where the conjunctions are lost and the sentence structure collapses. We are left with occult and alchemistic symbols and signs, gaming-boards and counters. Who is playing against whom and what kind of game is it. Is it a biographical or literary game? The author/artist has indeed lost himself in his work, like narcissus in his reflection. But the mirror is constantly fragmenting and multiplying, like the romantic, fictitiously autobiographical novel The Sandman by ETA Hoffman. MC Librarian is primarily about the artistic creative process as such and finally about the self and its limitations, about layers, loops reflections and how easy it is to lose oneself in one´s own image and reference world. But there are some secret doors in the system for those who persist in searching."
ARTIST'S WORDS
Gustav Sparr was born in 1977, grew up in the region of Stockholm, and took his Master of Fine Arts degree in Umeå. He is currently based in Göteborg, Sweden.
"References from popularculture, esotericism and scientific writings have been filtered through a quite direct visual language and formula that hides many underlying and unorthodox connections of ideas.
A typical framework or manifestation of these thought-experiments is through a kind of illustrative emblem-making, depicting the manipulation of objects producing or carrying information. Other main ingredients, besides logotypes and glyphs, have been books, boardgames and childlike acts, which are deciphered, re-interpreted and re-coded.
The animations and images are mainly concerned with questions about identity, self-image, structures, symbols, loops, surfaces, topology, vessels of information, lifeforms and how thoughts and ideas are born, relate and mutate. Basically it’s about the brain..."