Frank Björklund

Swedish artist Frank Björklund’s

paintings knock us off balance in a different way. While Bannon’images are dark and mysterious, Björklund’s are sharply focused and brightly lit. Björklund uses photorealist painting techniques to create witty, surreal tableaus. In “Gallows Humor” a suit of clothes that appears to have a man’s body inside it is suspended on a coat hanger over a city street. Poking gentie fun at Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” in another canvas, Björklund depicts the farnous painting draped over a clothesline like a wet towel, the artist’s palette hanging nearby.

I don’t sketch, I write,” says Björklund, describing the first steps of his creative process. Unlike the early surrealists, who channeled the subconscious in their paintings, Björklund carefully works out his ideas in the form of elever allegories before depicting them with utmost precision.