The horrors of psychosis and reality
Click on the images for information about
the paintings
The paintings at the exhibition "Bergtagen"
("Enchanted") show evidence of great commitment. They
are strong, beautiful, and sometimes painful to look at. Naturalistic
pictures are mixed with techniques from the expressionism, and the
paintings are colourful and dramatic. You see naked exposed bodies
that radiate anxiety and pain, but also happiness and hope. A painting
entitled "Måltiden" ("The Meal") is especially
scary. It shows a naked man  lying
down and a dog sniffing his crutch and another dog that seems to
be throwing a naked person on the ground.
When I saw this picture I was struck by the
terrible visions that psychotic people can experience. And my fright
grew even bigger when I became aware that the painting actually
instead depicts the story of a real-life event from the Balkan war.
The storyteller was not psychotic but suffered from severe anxiety
after having been at a prison camp. In this, he was tortured and
exposed to fake executions on three occasions, where the corpses
were thrown to the dogs. The fake executions have also inspired
the painting  "Övergrepp"
("Assault").
In the picture "Måltiden"
("The Meal") there are two white circles to the right
and left in the painting. A psychotherapist who found this picture
hard to look at said the circles made it easier for her to absorb
the painting. Tomas Niklasson explains that he has put the circles
there to accomplish the effect of "verfremdung", which
is a method to create a distance to the contents of the work. By
including a strange abstract element that contrasts to the reality
of the picture the emotional insight is counteracted. Something
has come between the contents and the viewer. The psychotherapist
who obviously interpreted this picture as an account of a psychotic
experience thought that the circles represented reality.
The story of the ex-prisoner from the Balkans
demonstrates how closely related the horrible experiences of a psychosis
and the reality can be. Sometimes the spectators react to Tomas
Niklasson’s pictures because they found them too nasty. They
think it is unnecessary to show sexual parts and assaults, for example.
The artist comments:
- I had to exaggerate as much as I could
to try to convey what these people told me about their experiences.
Still the pictures do not even come near to what I got to hear!
Neither could I depict everything I heard since it was often too
ghastly - people might experience it as a kind of pornographic violence.
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