Lars Arrhenius

LARS ARRHENIUS

BIG CITY SHORT STORIES

Arrhenius uses his paintings and animations to tell short stories of life's small incidents. He renders visible man's existential conditions in the big city, illustrating how the peculiar logic of chance can have a crucial impact on life. 

A-Z, 2002

Description
A grey tone map constitutes the background of 264 circular colour illustrations of eighteen people's adventures in a metropolis. Arrhenius charts the individual characters' routes through the city as vertical, horizontal and diagonal chains, overlapping again and again. Several of the linear sequences are dominated by a particular colour scheme, thus recalling the graphic structure of the London Underground Tube Map.

About the work
Arrhenius presents a series of anonymous figures drawn in a simple, stylised line. They wander around a setting void of light sources, shadows and any sense of perspective. Our otherwise limitless world is reduced to simple sections of longer, more complex stories. The absence of visual detail furthers the plot and underscores the characters' roles as extras in a larger narrative.
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Arrhenius' art in general
ARKEN's work A-Z closely resembles several of Arrhenius' other works, whether we follow the journey of a banknote from hand to hand (Domino, 2000) or a random person's possible adventures (The Man without One Way, 1999). Arrhenius circles around urban life and a recognisable reality. In the former work the narrative is governed by the principle that any action has a consequence; the latter poses the question, "what would have happened if…?"
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Literature
"Lars Arrhenius A-Z", Peer, London, 2002
"The man without one way", Artimo, Amsterdam, 1999