At Supermarket 2021 Nef presents three new artworks by Tomas Sjögren: An interactive wood, video and sound installation titled The Oracle (2021), together with two weaves titled Carnivorous Kurbits (2021) and Hellburner (2021). Bear in mind though, that the borders between the works are not that thick, and if observed closely enough the viewer may find links that glues all of the pieces together into a whole.

By the means of a multidisciplinary, mostly digital, practice ranging over 3D-renderings, VR, video, gaming and programming Tomas Sjögren’s work invites the viewer to contemplate the enigma of humankind’s relationship to technology. By accentuating the spiritual and material properties of virtual existence, Sjögren’s work plays with the idea that virtual worlds may not just be an extension of the natural world: they may possess a nature, materiality and mythology of their own, yet to be unveiled.

In The Oracle the old meets the new in a reconstructed hay fence filled with technological equipment. The installation works almost like a virtual mirror, where the avatars on the middle screen follow the movements of the viewers. But these mirror avatars also have their own agenda, and the viewer is invited to have a narrated conversation with them about nature, technology, magic, love, God, digitalism and AI, to name a few. The conversations are built on actual conversations that Sjögren undertook with an AI chatbot.