Delehag

I am a pre-war artist.
I reject our post-war culture.

The post-war was all about re-building:
Phoenix rising from the ashes.
Now we just build out of habit,
Following those who once saw the dust settle.

The system does not permit us
a pitstop to reconsider.
Our purpose – is the void of Profit.
Our squabbles are all equally beside the point.

Humanity is actively striving for its own demise.
We urgently need new hands to fit new gloves.
Warhol and Bacon are merchants of a failed state.
We don’t require another Picasso restrospective.

The pre-war artist provide utility,
not self-expression.
The pre-war artist makes practical,
not self-reflection.

We reimagine, reorganise and challenge
our most fundamental structures.
Find better formats and measures
than those we’re enslaved by.

How we count.
How we organise and experience time.
How we relate to our nature
and as fellows.

How we raise our young
How we regulate reality.
How we resist.

The pre-war artist develop new symbols
to gather around,
to replace those that failed us.

Faith is pointless
if practised alone.

Drawing from a rich tradition of iconography, Henrik Delehag’s work explores the most absolute of relationships; that between black and white. He seek to distill a complex reality into symbols of our collective understanding – provide typographic essence to the human condition.

ADULTS

What my comprehension can’t muster,
my pen must explain.
It distills a complex reality
into items of my understanding.
On the knife’s edge
between black and white
it summons the truth.
Lately, your faces
have demanded translation.
Politics long in turmoil,
you’ve taken it on the chin.
I collect the lines on my commute,
and bend them into submission
when I get home.
You appear before me,
out from the wash,
warts and all.
And with each face the revelation,
I only used you for a mirror.
That the pursuit of your essence,
arrived at a different truth.

That’s me in the corner,
losing my religion.