These are not portraits in the sense of depicting the physical ‘likeness’ of an individual but rather a symbol of emotion whose meaning can be agreed upon, the result of the dynamic interaction of black and white shapes and the spaces in between. When a number of such heads are assembled together, they generate a collective mood, as in his series ‘Londoners’.
Henrik Delehag’s work spans a wide range of forms – drawing, painting, film, writing, typography and various combinations of all these. Throughout, he invites us to question the way we lead our lives - the way we structure time, the means by which we communicate and the way we relate to the planet we inhabit.
Delehag’s visual work is typographical in nature, reflecting the training he received at Berghs in Stockholm 1996-98 and the years spent on and off in advertising from 2000 to 2009. It is well suited to his constant quest for new symbols whose meanings can be recognised as expressions of a world view. Delehag’s discovery of Maori culture during his teenage years in New Zealand stimulated a fascination with the essential symbolic power of tribal art that he has continued to draw on to this day.
Delehag’s visual work also bears witness to an obsessive preoccupation with the relationship of the colours black and white. The primary vehicle for his explorations has been the human face and its capacity to represent endless configurations of emotions. Hundreds of drawings of faces, observed and noted in sketchbooks, like diary entries during daily commutes on the tube, are the starting point of translations into graphic symbols. Deleheg is not a puritan, however, and has produced works opposing blue to white and black (‘The Curators’) with less stark effects, some of them reminiscent of Matisse’s sinuous Blue Nudes. During the dark days of lockdown, his many followers found solace in offerings of such images that came each day from the church tower where he lives.