Safety Propagandist #1: Sven Loven
Sven Loven is a NY-based, Stockholm-born artist that makes acrylic paintings that depict phantasmagorias of imagery culled from art historical, transcendental, and technological sources. He’s also a friend of mine, and often one of my most potent critics and conversationalists. Extremely well-read in philosophy and the occult, Sven is an excellent critic in his own right. Since he has a talent in pointing out the contradictions in my own worldview, I thought I’d flip the script and put him under the microscope. So here it is, Sven Loven, SP’s first “Safety Propagandist.”
Adam Lehrer: Typically the art works that seem to address mass media in the post-digital landscape are saturated with pessimism, but that isn't totally the case in your paintings, I don't think. Instead, you seem fascinated with the formal possibilities that cyberspace has given an outlet to. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if not, could you elaborate upon this interest you have in digital forms of expression?
Sven Loven: The internet gives us access to a remarkable amount of information, and that is a wonderful thing. When I was a child I would scavenge for books in the trash and would collect auction catalogues. These resources offered a wealth of art historical information and introduced me to many artists outside of the established canon. With the net it's great that one can find out about culture, rare artists, old books, hard to find records etc. It was also thrilling to find subcultures with a vast array of content such as Japanese ASCII art. I was very into DJ culture as well, so finding music on Soundcloud was great; even the collages people would make for mix tapes had a spontaneity and originality that was uncommon in contemporary art, which I liked. However, I am talking about my experiences a number of years ago. I did not grow up with computers, I never used social media until Instagram, and becoming acquainted with that part of the internet and seeing so many spaces get neutered mostly soured me on the net. I still use it throughout my day of course but usually the less time I actively spend on it the better. Social media really is a form of mind control and I find it repulsive to be controlled by it. I'm beginning to think it was a “psyop” from the get but if it becomes a public utility, it will exist mostly as a form of social coercion.
AL: You often connect “low” imagery of the internet to high art, aspirational historical sources. For example, Ideal Lover featured a dating app portrait set against the "Kappa" monster from Japanese folklore. Why the desire to connect these new modes of communication and expressions of desire to these images of transcendence and mysticism?
SL: That piece was from a show in Copenhagen. Some of the thematic content of that show was defunct technology; like burner phones, nostalgic fetishism for flip phones and kitsch mechanizations; but I found it intriguing to explore alchemical themes that often aspire to eternal or transcendent notions, in contrast to that of transitory and perishing cultures.
AL: In your piece on E'wao Kagoshima for Spike, you make note of the ways in which postmodern television images bled into his work after he moved to New York in the 1980s. Similarly, your work seems to collapse the distance between the contemporary (technology, control systems, desiring machines) and a kind of romanticist, occult sensibility. Do you think contemporary art lacks an ethereal quality?
SL: Contemporary art involved in metaphysics is rare, as the polarities governing our age are usually either ironic detachment or earnest investments in identity. There are definitely artists still working with mystic sensibilities, some of which can be respectable, but actual metaphysicians are a rare thing. This makes sense as on the one hand, it can be a boring topic when intellectualized, and on the other hand an earnest metaphysics is usually incompatible with contemporary art as the dogma’s conflict. Most contemporary art is obsessed with teleological positioning as a savvy knowledge of this helps to buttress a career.
AL: I know you're a diligent reader of philosophy, the occult, and more. How does your reading inform the work you make?
SL: I work mostly on impulse and instinct, so it perhaps does not have a deliberate effect beyond thematic content and affectation of language. However, in the past year I inadvertently became more involved with mysticism and am involved with a specific practice that has provided a more direct contact with experiences outside of the ordinary, empirical world construct. As this exploration and process continues it will probably affect my work more.
AL: You've said you believe that collapse is interesting and adventurous. I think I agree with this. Certainly art is in a bad state right now, for many of the reasons we often discuss. But the culture itself might be looked upon as having had a fascinating psychosis to it. All the smoke screens. Reddit stock market warriors. Shaman insurrectionists. Could you explain more about this concept, the aesthetics of collapse, and what it means to you?
SL: Back when Reddit was actually still an interesting place, like perhaps eight years ago, I was actively participating in some of the weirder forums ,involving political theory, cultural theory, metaphysics and philosophy. I actually met the cultural theorist Edmund Berger, as well as other figures from “Weird Twitter,” as we were some of the people who got a kick out of debating the weirder positions bouncing around, like Maoists, or “Ancaps,” Transhuman Monarchists, etc. As part of being introduced to those extreme positions, I began comparing empires, such as the misery inflicted by the USA vs that of the USSR. Though I personally consider the USSR a nightmare society and prefer to err on the side of “'murican freedom”, when comparing the wars and interventions of both empires the US can be seen to have had more blood on its hands; in the end it may have inflicted more misery. This imperialism will continue. In that sense perhaps the best thing would be Balkanization of the US empire. Of course in the long run, would a world hegemony controlled by China be preferable? That would be hard to tell. Our present society fetishizes growth but this incessant desire for expansion can be considered foolishly self destructive.
AL: How does an artist navigate the censorious climate we're in right now without getting sucked into it? I admire that you're able to stay above the fray in a way.
SL: My main allegiance is to art. It's not worth it to me to argue semantics or polemics if it would interfere with my art making.
AL: Who are the artists that you hold dearest. What work blows your mind? What should everyone look at and behold in amazement? What should people get off on?
SL: For living artists I like E’wao Kagoshima of course. I really hope he can achieve more success as he still lives in relative poverty and just works out of his apartment. I personally love Mondrian, Van Eyck, Piero della Francesca. If there is a classic Mondrian on display at MoMA, I can leave there happy.
AL: Reading recommendations?
SL: I just listened to a bunch of PK Dick books that were on Youtube, with The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch being the craziest one. I hope to read his The Exegesis eventually. I started reading Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, which had been recommended to me for years by metaphysicians. but I haven't read enough to form an opinion. Interestingly I get the impression that it explores ways in which alchemical ontologies prefigure the work of figures like Debord, Baudrillard and McLuhan.
Images:
Sven Loven The Egoist Rider
Sven Loven I want to love everybody and be loved by everybody, to be the prism and the rainbow, to have so many minds reflected within me that reality is indistinguishable from a dream
Sven Loven Trip To Mars
Sven Loven Optimism During a Meltdown
The Safety Propagandist interviews are a series of Email correspondences between artist, writer and Safety Propaganda curator Adam Lehrer with artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, dissidents, crackpots, sorcerers, outsiders, weirdos and more. The courageous ones. The ones who won’t be silenced.