Study for World Model (Garden) 1974

Oyvind Fahlstrom made this piece called Study for World Model (Garden) using some sort of drawing media – maybe ink, maybe something else – and it's like a brain dump, or a map of the world as he saw it. The colors are like highlighters, all bright and popping, which makes you think about how he’s trying to point out what's important. The cool thing is how he doesn’t hide anything. You can see all the lines, all the changes, like he’s thinking right in front of us. And it’s dense, right? Like there’s no space to breathe, but that’s kind of the point. It’s like he’s saying, “Hey, this is a lot, but we gotta deal with it.” I keep coming back to this one little blue shape in the lower center - is it water, is it a building? I don't know. You know who this reminds me of? Paul Klee. Both of them had this way of making art that feels like thinking, like they're not trying to give you answers, but just get you to ask questions. It’s a conversation, not a lecture, and that’s what makes art alive, right?