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A common theme in many of my works is a reinterpretation of classical fairytales as well as a more general interest in memory in connection to childhood - for instance in my performances Castle, Folding and Jukebox. These playful performances exist in the lost land of childhood, between dream and reality and it is in this meeting or confrontation of these two conditions, in a kind of utopian embodiment, that these works of art become alive, often in a tragicomic way.

This interest for the romantic is extended in my later exhibitions White Shadows at Esbjerg Art Museum and From dust to dusk, but here with less focus on the confrontation between dream and reality leaving more space for the poetic aspect as well as the possibility of a reality behind or within the dream.

Lately I have been working almost exclusively with white paper in different objects, paper cuts, installations and performances. Some of these objects and installations are copies of stairs and ladders made out of thin paper. These works derive from my earlier work, Bridge and Still Life, dealing with dreams and the impossible - but here in a more fragile and almost sublime version. The trashy style in earlier works is here exchanged with a more precise aesthetics. The work exists in the gap between the recognizable everyday object and the fragile and spherical condition and material in which it appears. The whiteness, the ideal pure copy of something real as well as the vertical direction coherent in most of my paper works, could also indicate the aspect of something platonic or religious.

Most recently I have started making white paper cuts/sculptures inspired by fairytales and romanticism exploring the relationship between two and three dimensionality, between image and reality I find this materialization of a flat piece of paper into a 3D form almost as a magic process - or maybe one could call it obvious magic, because the process is obvious and the figures still stick to their origin, without the possibility of escaping. In that sense there is also an aspect of something tragic in most of the cuts. Some of the small paper cuts relate to a universe of fairy tales and romanticism, as for instance "Impenetrable Castle" inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", in which a tin soldier falls in love with a paper ballerina, living in a paper castle. Other paper cuts are small dramas in which small figures are lost within and threatened by the huge powerful nature. Others again are turning the inside out, or letting the front and the back of the paper meet - dealing with impossibility, illusions, and reflections.

I find the A4 sheet of paper interesting to work with, because it probably still is the most common and consumed media and format for carrying information today, and in that sense it is something very loaded. This means that we rarely notice the actual materiality of the A4 paper. By removing all the information and starting from scratch using the blank white 80gsm A4 paper as a base for my creations, I feel that I have found a material which, on one hand, we all are able to relate to, and which on the other hand is non-loaded and neutral and therefore easier to fill with different meanings. The thin white paper also gives the paper sculptures a fragility which underlines the tragic and romantic theme of the works.

A continual figure in my earlier performances and later drawings is The Dying Swan, who can be described as a hybrid between The Ugly Duckling and a human figure. The Dying Swan reveals different layers of identities, and often he strives for being somebody or somewhere else or tries to achieve the impossible - he is, however, always confronted with reality and failure. He is not only a symbolic character. In his interaction and power-play with the audience his physical presence often creates an intense and uncomfortable atmosphere. In the drawings The Dying Swan creates his own universe, where he seems to be trapped in impossible situations and circles, dealing with death, rebirth, self-creation, and -destruction.

Peter Callesen