Petter Zennström’s paintings have evolved a singular, abstract imagery in clear colours, which brings to mind southern climes. Zennström has also been heavily influenced by non-Western cultures, such as Haitian voodoo. Using black-and-white scraperboard, he conjures up darkly satirical images of inequality, abuses of power, environmental degradation, and capitalist society’s exploitation of the Third World. This social criticism culminates in a fateful danse macabre in the series Death’s News.
In All Your Fucking Power, some suited figures are turning into skeletons while factory chimneys spew their toxic, black smoke out over an apocalyptic landscape. Zennström’s imagery has much in common with mediaeval and Renaissance graphic artists—Albrecht Dürer, say, or Pieter Bruegel the Elder—a burlesque narrative tradition that does not shrink from portraying humanity’s darker side.
Kristoffer Arvidsson from The Collection Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg 2014
