Andréas Wargenbrant

Andréas Wargenbrant

The spirited art of Andréas Wargenbrant is celebrated primarily for noted sculptural works in bronze and marble. As an autodidact, or self-taught creative intuitive, he has always stood on the side of formal art education, and its staid institutional framework. Andréas works in a postmodernist tradition while ascending from Sweden’s sculptural origins, finding inspiration in the imagery of popular culture propels his newest works. The disciplined, skillful craftsmanship of these works is intentional and cleverly cerebral.

Pop Art’s origin was strongly influence by the ideas of the Dada movement and Marcel Duchamp in the early 20th Century. Duchamp's brash, often humorous, light-hearted approach to art, evoked a powerful surrealistic quality. Andréas Wargenbrant has developed a sculptural Pop Art style based on the visual vernacular characterized in his sense of intrinsic optimism, coinciding with the globalization of popular culture. Andréas analyses the comparative normal scope of objects, procuring everyday items; such as a Dollar bill or a dice, recreating the form as art, in an exaggerated size cast in bronze.

Insightfully reassessing the original object, stripped of its intended function, now refined as an objet d'art that incites meaningful contemplation. Andréas’ profoundly personal and predilection of the positive message of a six-sided dice with sixes emblazoned on all sides, in his: “Winner Takes All” is acute in its emblematical enthusiasm.

In 1961, the début of the Age of Pop Art, Andy Warhol created works illustrating the one-dollar bill. Fifty-five years later with “My First Dollar” series of bronze sculptures, Andréas Wargenbrant aligned with a distinctive cultural and monetary perspective, again heightens the symbol of American legal tender as pop art. Andréas’ Dollar bill sums up one of the most positive ideals of aspiration and wealth, a basic refrain that propels his, and any successful career; it all starts with My First Dollar and a sense of optimism.

Andréas with a clear association with the wooden horse, explores one of the most beloved national symbols of Sweden. The hand-carved Dala horse sculptures are a testament to a cultural heritage, a treasured symbol of Sweden for centuries. The Dala horse was not just an ornament but served as an economic tool or currency and an important source of income for rural families. The skills for carving the Dala Horse have been passed from generation to generation of children; today it is one of the few living, genuine folk traditions of Sweden. Reflecting a lasting national and civic sensibility, Andréas sculpts an immortal image of the Dala horse in works of multi patinated bronze.

Emblematic of the American West the bond of the horses and human induce a compassionate and devoted sentiment in the hearts of the Indigenous Peoples and Westerner settlers. This impassioned affection for horses can be traced throughout the history of North American, with an unfailing reverence shown for these animals. These noble creatures are legendary their significance to the history of the wild frontier in North American. The story of the horse is one that approaches myth, as the species repopulates its genetic place of origin on the planet. Andréas’ timeless bronze Dala horse works are enigmatically representative of a symbolic and intrinsic primitiveness, juxtaposed with a modernist, contemporary elegance of form.

Pop Art in its former place challenged the theoretical canons of the art establishment, mass-marketing practices and the culture of consumerism. Pop art is now institutional in the fine art establishment. Vis-à-vis, aesthetically, the series “Holes” in which Andréas examines the lineage of the sculpture; the history, purpose, or the context of a work, discovered the convergence of these diverse dynamics, which in our contemporary world, art is often born of formality and the modernist ethos. As with the Dada artists, Andréas presents, through his objet d'art a kind of meta critique of our customary historic and idealistic foundations and the portrayal and values of beauty.

Andréas’ inherent good nature is communicated to the viewer through his work, a two-sided dialogue ensues as the viewer discovers their own perspective through critical analysis. Andréas’ Dollars and Dice may represent to some the artifice of wealth accumulation and gaming's glamorous façade, placing them alongside other cultural commodities of consumption, in critique of a globalize consumer society. Or they may concur with Andréas, celebrating the pure bliss of winning, on their own accord.