Mentalt sällskap
I first encountered Truls Melin in person when he was awarded the Friends of Moderna Museet Sculpture Prize in 2007. Back then I was on the association’s board and tasked with organizing the production of a catalog to be published in conjunction with the award ceremony. The following year, we made plans at Magasin III to invite an artist and create a work for the turning bay outside our entrance. My thoughts went spontaneously to Truls Melin’s subtly playful and often monochromatic sculptures. Since the early 1980s, he had converted his interest in childhood imagination, model-building, and construction into a series of works anchored in personal memories and references.
After we had invited Truls and discussed with him over the phone, he set to work in his studio in Copenhagen. In the autumn of 2008, he came up to Stockholm and presented his proposal with the aid of a model. He envisioned a system of pipes rising upward, with one standing and one reclining figure incorporated into the labyrinthine structure. The work would be painted in a shade of green which is thought to have a calming effect and that Truls frequently used in his works. The color is often found in the interiors of psychiatric clinics and the cramped crew quarters of submarines and airplanes.
On March 19, 2009, the finished sculpture arrived from Malmö on a flatbed truck. In preparation for the installation, a base had been cast into the turning bay. With the aid of a forklift and a crane, the sculpture was heaved into place and attached to the base. The protective plastic around the sculpture was cut off and gravel was raked over the foundation. Truls, who had been present during the entire procedure, said very few words but was clearly pleased. The day ended with the team and Truls raising a toast to the fact that Mentalt sällskap (Mental Company) was in place and had been inaugurated.
The two figures are short and compact. Only their noses are clearly shaped; otherwise, their faces lack distinct features. Hopelessly stuck in the system, they appear to have melted into the pipes and their static form. The figures exist in a state of social exclusion but keep each other company in an imagined and desired companionship. Truls himself referred to his works as “sculptures of silence.” For him, working with them was a way to shield himself from the hubbub of the outside world.
For over a decade, Mentalt sällskap has welcomed both the museum’s visitors and everyone else who passes by. The sculpture both blends in with the rough-and-ready harbor environment and contrasts in color with Magasin III’s brick facade. Sometimes the sculpture has glittered in the summer sun; sometimes the figures have been under puffy heaps of snow. The shifting weather conditions have bleached the green color and the sculpture has regularly been restored and refreshed.
Truls Melin visited Magasin III over the years and inspected his sculpture on a number of occasions. Curator Olga Krzeszowiec Malmsten and I included Mentalt sällskap in our exhibition A Quiet Spring Wanders Through the Apartment (May–December 2021). Truls attended on the next-to-last day of the exhibition. We spent a few hours together looking at the exhibition, popping into the collection’s studio space where our head technician, Thomas Nordin, was working on some artworks, and sitting in the entrance hall chatting. Before we parted, we put on our jackets and went out into the winter darkness. We discussed how to best go about dismantling the sculpture, should we decide to store it or display it indoors. Truls said that all the pipe mountings and screw nuts would need to be labeled so that the sculpture retained its shape. I then took a series of photos of Truls in front of the sculpture. A few weeks later, news reached us that Truls Melin had passed away. One of our time’s most distinctive and consistent artists had fallen silent.
However, his works, and for me especially Mentalt sällskap, still remain among us, with their very special poetry and presence.
– Tessa Praun, January 2022
