Ten by Ten is about the grand and unexpected leaps in art history, where ten works are selected from different time periods to engage in conversation with us. The purpose is to allow the audience to experience the power of a few selected works, each of which has made art life shake a bit.

Öyvind Fahlström’s 1966 Vietnam Game Predicted Disaster to Come

Portraying global conflicts as strategic board games became something of a trademark for Öyvind Fahlström, who

went on to win legendary status in the art world. His piece Eddie in the Desert… Dominoes can be interpreted as a remarkably early assessment of a war that was already showing signs of impending disaster. Now, it’s being shown at CFHILL. It was 1966, and Western discourse was still broadly supportive of US engagement in the war against the communist rebel forces in Vietnam. However, alarming signs were beginning to emerge, and were picked up on and reinterpreted by Swedish artist Öyvind Fahlström (1928–1976) in his work Eddie in the Desert… Dominoes. The painting strongly resembles a board game; the shiny squares are magnetic, which allows the viewer of the piece to move them around as they see fit. These quizzical, cipher-like, and cartoonish game counters display fragments of charged, mysterious subjects, all executed with a mild palette of pastels. A tombstone with the epitaph “Here lies Chuck executed” visually matches another piece, “for Cowardice.” 

“Fahlström was very quick to realise the implications of the US endeavour to halt the advance of the Vietnamese left in the 60s. He used art to present an account of the various interests and political doctrines that dominated the era. What’s more, he did it with an unusual degree of finesse. It’s a cool analysis, and a smart piece. Global opinion wouldn’t shift for another two years, but by that point, it was already too late,” explains Michael Storåkers, Head of Contemporary at CFHILL, where the painting is currently on show.

Öyvind Fahlström is considered a Swedish artist, but was born to Swedish/Norwegian parents living in Brazil, and mainly lived and worked in the USA. In the early 1960s, he took over Robert Rauschenberg’s old studio in New York, and a few years later, as a result of interactions with peace activist groups, his oeuvre was radicalised and took on increasingly political dimensions. Today, he is counted among the most important and artists of his day, and few other artists from the post-war era can rival his near-mythical status. Eddie in the Desert… Dominoes is one of the first entries in a long series of interactive works, which includes World Trade Monopoly (1970 MoMA, NY) and World Bank (1971, Moderna Museet). Eddie in the Desert… Dominoes is one of ten works shown in the eighth edition of CFHILLS exhibition series Ten by Ten, in which each edition features a selection of ten masterpieces from different times and places. Other participating artists are Ivan Aguéli, Banksy, Lena Cronqvist, Sam Francis, Konrad Klapheck, Joan Miró, Harvey Quaytman, Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, and Ragnar Sandberg.