Pär Strömberg: Art and Wine – How They Became My Obsession

Pär Strömberg shares a series of new works that marry two of his great passions: wine and art. The PAPER Artist typically explores nature, folklore and new forms of Gothic Romanticism within his practice, which is heavily influenced by the popular underground culture of Scandinavian black metal. Read our 2017 feature on Pär, here. 

My interest in wine dates back to my time as a practicing artist in Amsterdam. It was there I had my first real tasting experience, drinking white prestige burgundies. At a dinner with Roger Dorresteijn – my wine guru as well as CEO of the punk record label Epitaph – and some real-life punk rock rebels with exquisite taste in style, food and wine, we drank, and I tasted things I had never experienced before. Knowledgeable as they were, I thought to myself: ‘If old punks can dig prestige wine, so can a punk artist.’ Roger and I would have our own wine tasting hits, either with bands visiting Amsterdam while on tour, or at his place, focusing on natural, small-scale producers and wine farmers with a profound and honest take on the industry. After all, we came from the punk scene and its DIY spirit.

With my background in skateboarding, punk and black metal music, my paintings have developed a powerful language entirely their own, which I’ve been fortunate enough to show and share in galleries, museums and other institutions across the world over these past two decades. In 2010, moved back to Stockholm, Sweden, to give family life a chance. I’m now married with two kids, a villa in the suburbs, a white picket fence, a pool and a family car. Not very punk, and yet it still has a hold on me. With a WSET-sommelier diploma to my name, I have been drawn into the seductive world of wine and wine writing. Much is shared between it and art – values, imagery, words and experiences that now create a new language for me to explore. Today, the brushes coexist with the bottles in my painting studio; my painterly excursions flow onto the paper like wine pouring into my glass.

To blend my two professions, which occupy my senses as well as my time, I have created a series of stain pattern abstractions of wine on paper over the past few years. The paintings are created by dripping clean, cleansing and wiping my glass on watercolor paper – with chance and fortuity as my guiding star – at the wine tasting sessions for wine writers at the Systembolaget, the government-owned chain of liquor stores with a nationwide monopoly. The quality ranges from € 4 to € 4,000 and every drop is unique – speaking of the time and effort spent by the producers, farmers and winemakers, their ideas, hopes and dream – as it floods my senses. As traces or blood spatter, stains, roots, punk or symbol-clad black metal logos, these paintings are as suggestive as they are the objective result of my occupations.

So, the wine served at an art opening / vernissage wasn’t what attracted me to the wine world; I drank mainly beer and vodka at the time. It was other encounters, with people from the worlds of art and music, and their passion for this truly magical grape beverage. Like art, music, writing and other creative expressions, wine and winemaking meet in many places. It’s all somehow about the essence of human craft and how to tame nature, about the passion, philosophy and poetry of creative people in their quest for pure expression. It’s also about materiality, political ideas and natural resources. We have a huge responsibility as creators and consumers of both wine and art. Sustainability and economy are running a dystopian race, each on their own intersecting track towards our last judgement. Meanwhile we can all do our best to enjoy this contribution to culture as we move towards, a hopefully protracted, Armageddon.