This is an address that does not exist
Endre Nemes square,
sculpture/street object, Galleri 21 Malmö 2025
We want to sit down at a set table and lie down on mangled linen.
We are less inclined to pick up our rib-eye steak straight from the
slaughterhouse, or to lie down in the evening on the blood-stained
sheets of murder victims. We distinguish between the acceptable and
the unacceptable.
My whole life was a deep sinking into horror. Someone else could have
gotten over it. Someone else could perhaps have coaxed a laugh, to
tame their despair.
from Endre Nemes' foreword in the Academy of Fine Arts catalog for
his 1979 exhibition
I grew up in Högsbo in Gothenburg in Sweden and was about five years old
when I first saw Endre Nemes' public work Marble Intarsia in the center
of the square in Högsbo. My brother, or maybe it was my father,
or maybe it was both my brother and my father, commented on the work
and told me that what I was seeing was modern art.
...
The tragedy of the twentieth century through two
world wars and the subsequent Cold War was part of Endre Nemes' mental
baggage. Marble Intarsia may be an image representing the disintegration
and grief of a world dissolved by war and destruction. But the viewer
is left alone with possible narrative interpretations and associations
around the image's subject. I can see traces of the Italian Futurists.
There is a woman walking up or down a staircase with Duchamp and subsequent
Dadaism in mind. There's a large figure in the center, reminiscent
of a screaming woman. And there are traces of ancient mythology. I
can see Icarus flying too close to the sun. Perhaps Marble Intarsia
is about a deep immersion in horror, a motif that could never have
found a place in a forward-looking Swedish suburb in the 1950s if
Nemes had revealed that this was what the picture represented.
Ex-post constructions tend to remain uncertain questions
and guesses.
Marble Intarsia found a space in Högsbo in Gothenburg. A square
that for me has become Endre Nemes' place. At the same time, it is
an address that does not exist. And Endre Neme's marble intarsia is
just called Marble Intarsia.
Lars Embäck 2025
