Carl Johan Erikson

“ ‘It is now fifteen years since I lost the ability to speak in tongues,’ the artist writes in a short background text. The works can be seen as a personal flashback to growing up in the Free Church movement. But also a more general picture of what, together with the Labour movement, has been one of the country’s big movements during this century. Carl Johan Erikson’s factual tone and his method of highlighting excerpts from this story are effective. The woman’s face is surrounded by a neutral background, we see her immersed in her own speech, in a state beyond the control of the conventional language, devoted to a higher power. The images are fascinating, while at the same time a strange distance is formed. The baptismal basins are photographed from one and the same angle, without people. Some are clearly in use, but most have not been used for a long time. Several have become containers for leftover rubbish, as an inexorable reminder of a growing secularization. The home-made feeling is also noticeable, a sought-after simplicity but with temporary solutions that becomes a bit touching. A funny oscillation is formed between now and then, between the sacred and the profane, between spirit and matter.”

Translated quote from DN, 1999-11-17, Milou Allerholm. Read full text in Swedish.

“ ‘It is now fifteen years since I lost the ability to speak in tongues’, the artist writes in a short background text. The works can be seen as a personal flashback to growing up in the Free Church movement. But also a more general picture of what, together with the Labour movement, has been one of the country’s big movements during this century. Carl Johan Erikson’s factual tone and his method of highlighting excerpts from this story are effective. The woman’s face is surrounded by a neutral background, we see her immersed in her own speech, in a state beyond the control of the conventional language, devoted to a higher power. The images are fascinating, while at the same time a strange distance is formed.”

Translated quote from SvD, 1999-11-13, Hans Hedberg. Read full text in Swedish.