Tread
(Once Upon A Tile...)
Swedish title: Träd (Det var en gång...)
Haraberget is a new building in Ljungby that houses a preschool, a restaurant, a retirement home with domestic services. Mounted on Harabergets corridor walls is a series of 27 separate artworks in 41 parts. Their sizes varies; the largest piece is 125 x 190 cm, the smallest 30 x 30 cm.
The installed sequence of images was especially created for Haraberget with the intention to create a pictorial passage its corridors linking specific rooms and operations. The artworks are printed on sheets of plywood framed in walnut. In an accessible outdoor area there is a special diptych made to withstand rain and wind, printed on armored glass mounted on the brick walls. The sheets of glass sits in aluminum frames insulated with rubber linings.
According to the encyclopedia, “corridor” is a “long indoor passage along a row of rooms". The word has its etymological origin from the Latin corridio, correre, “to run" and torium, “a place". A place to run through. The main ideas and motifs that informs and appears in the sequence of images are: The vanishing point of a corridor in relation to the illusion of space depicted on planes; The tortoise and the hare as age signifiers and complementary characters in a race; The geometric cuts of wooden puzzles like Tangram and other tile-laying games and puzzles like Columbus Egg and Ostomacchion; The Golden Section as cosmic harmony and hidden patterns of art, plants and all life; The paradoxes of Zeno of time and movement; The relationship and passage between states of youth and seniority; The tree as a home to nesting birds, as physical material for buildings, boards and books, and as a symbol for growth and the branching; The book, as a story container with prologue and epilogue and all its passages inbetween.
Public commision initiated by Ljungbybostäder AB.
Plywood prints manufactured by Crimson AB.
Glass prints manufactured by PrintGlas AB.
Logistics & Installation by MTAB.
Project started May 2023 and installed April 2024.
Gustav Sparr © 2024.
Tread (Once Upon A Tile...)
Artist: Gustav Sparr
Art Consultant: Anna-Karin Arvidsson • Property Manager: Bengt Larsson, Ljungbybostäder • Production: Ulf Stenborg, Printglas; Eva Dahlgren, Crimson Färglabb AB, • Logistics: Ola Runefall, MTAB • Installation: Kasper & Fredrik, MTAB.
