Emil Holmer: Parasites and Diagramme

A Swedish Painter in Berlin§Emil Holmer was born in 1975 in Karlstad, Sweden, but for the last decade has lived in Berlin, near Hermannplatz in the district of Neukölln. His abstract painting certainly hints at something of this big-city background, which continues to resist growing threats of gentrification. The themes of Emil Holmer's works feed off a clear perception of these urban spaces. First we have the backgrounds of the images which, in what are usually two to three-meter oil paintings, function as all-over coverage of various layers of overpainting and appear like messily executed façade painting. To this end, among other things the artist also uses sprayed colors and paints, which appear – not by chance – to reflect the ubiquitous graffiti. He gives his images form and shape by using hard, black lines to position collections of comic-like elements. In his essay for this subsequent book, the first publication by the young Swede, it is not by chance that the new darling of philosophy on the Berlin scene Marcus Steinweg addresses the theme of painting overcoming death, whereby he reflects Louise Bourgeois' credo that "art is about life" with Jacques Lacan's zero point, absolute reality. There it also makes sense that Emil Holmer formats his paintings in such large dimensions; this not only reflects his experiences of the urban space, but as images they also create an experiential space into which the observer can actually step, so that he or she is surrounded by Emil Holmer's reality. The design of the landscape-format book, which the artist decided on himself, plays on this experience.§