Michael Johansson: A Regular Daily Life

Michael Johansson is a Swedish installation artist who takes OCD tendencies to the next level with his real-life Tetris sculptures. His passion for ordinary and useless things organised into exceptionally good-looking piles makes most neat-freaks look like the biggest slobs. Johansson is obsessed with irregularities and coincidences between to disparate objects which may only be linked by a common colour or a shape. On a more practical level, I bet this guy is excellent at stacking dishwashers, packing car boots and fridges. Yes!
“I am fascinated walking around flea markets finding doubles of seemingly unique, though often useless objects I have already purchased at another flea market. Despite the fact that I did not have any use for them even the first time, the desire to own two of these objects becomes too strong to resist. The unique and unknown origin of the object increases my desire to want the double – the unlikelihood of this sensation repeating itself produces an attraction that is too strong to resist. I am intrigued by irregularities in daily life. Not those that appear when something extraordinary occurs, but those that are created by an exaggerated form of regularity. Colours or patterns from two separate objects or environments concur, like when two people pass each other dressed in the exact same outfit. Or when you are switching channels on your TV and realise that the same actor is playing two different roles on two different channels at the same time. Or that one day the parking lot contained only red cars.”