#567 Word Is Flesh (2025) Original Painting by Johan Söderström

64x84 cm | Filler, pine panel

The language is flat. It is superficial—not in the sense of lacking meaning, but in a spatial sense. It covers every surface but does not penetrate materiality. I have drawn the interconnected speech bubbles with overlaps to create a sense of depth in the image. The word becomes flesh.

Anyone who has ventured into the comment sections of public posts may feel that something grotesque has come to life there. In those uninhibited exchanges of opinion, a kind of fermentation process has taken place—something different, something alien, has emerged. A new life form made of language, but not necessarily one that conveys meaning. On the contrary, meaning disintegrates and reconstitutes itself in a convulsive, perpetually shifting movement.

The accumulated speech bubbles and their four hooks might resemble a swastika on steroids—swollen flesh circling itself. Today’s fascism differs from the one we remember from the twentieth-century totalitarian regimes. Those were built on corporatist ideas—one people, one voice: the nation or the party. They arose from a linguistic notion of purity. Today, by contrast, we see a swarm of conflicting voices within what we call the far right: norm-dissolving cynicism mingled with blind faith, conspiracy theories entwined with a nostalgic longing for safety. They do not relate to any unifying force but instead dismantle every intention toward truth. It is as if today’s fascism does not arise from language, but from the bodily—from unfathomable, chaotic matter: what Jacques Lacan describes as the Real.

Materials used:

Filler (coarse and fine) in pine panel

Details:

• Painting on Panel / Board / MDF
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 64 x 84 x 5cm (framed)
• Framed and ready to hang
• Signed on the back
• Style: Abstract
• Subject: Abstract and non-figurative