Artist Spotlight: Per Fhager

Country: Sweden

Medium of Art: Needle Point

@Perfhager | Perfhager.deviantart.com

Swedish Artist Per Fhager’s work is impressive at first glance. It’s even more impressive when the scale of what you’re seeing registers. When isolated against a white wall, his stunning needle point illustrations don’t convey a sense of scale, the enormity of the work only truly discernable in a shot of the artist on his knees, unfurling a massive mural of wool.

“The video games of the ’80s and ’90s have had a huge impact on my personal creativity,” began Fhager. “The movement, colours, and music combined with a unique aesthetic immediately captured my imagination as a child. The catalyst of my artistry is love; the love of video games and the love of craft.”

The odd juxtaposition of selecting such a traditional craft to pay tribute to a “modern phenomenon” isn’t lost on Fhager. In fact, that is the crux of his work. “In my art I translate video game screenshots into needle point, as the system of pixels is identical to stitches on canvas.”

A self-described “maker” since childhood, dabbling in everything from drawing to building to sewing, Fhager studied textile crafts in high school and has a bachelor’s degree in fashion design from Stockholm. His studies translated into a career in textile prints for kids wear. A few years back he left his fulltime job to focus on his personal art.

“In my early school years I could spend hours with my NES turned on, nose almost touching the TV, drawing Goomba and Lakitu sprites on graph paper. As I’ve always found myself drawn to visuals based on systems and repetition, like repeated fabric patterns or Moroccan tiles, the allure of pixel graphics is hardly surprising. I’m in awe of the video game creators of the time who managed to create these vivid characters and worlds with such limited tools.”

His first major needle point piece took two years to complete, but his work began to increase at a steady pace as his technique improved. “At the time I was a regular at a yarn shop in Stockholm, and at one point the owner asked if I wanted to exhibit my needle point works in the store window. This exposure resulted in an art gallery approaching me, gallerist Jan Stene at Stene Projects.” Fhager and Stene now collaborate frequently, and his works are regularly displayed in the Stockholm gallery, as well as Art Copenhagen, the Swedish Association of Art, the Stockholm Video Game Museum, and the London-based Belmacz.

“The catalyst of my artistry is love; the love of video games and the love of craft.”

All of Fhager’s work is done by hand. “Performing this slow and methodical craft is a fundamental part of my artistry, and the satisfaction of reaching the end and seeing the finished result is a unique and emotional experience, further fueling my creativity.”

His research requires revisiting games, a task Fhager seems to enjoy as part of the creative process. “A lot of time is spent playing video games, finding the scenes I want to recreate. Once a choice of visual is established I start to look at the colours, material, and dimensions. Translating the TV screen’s shiny RGB colours into matte yarn can be tough, and I can spend days trying out different colour combinations before brutally rejecting everything and starting over.”

Getting technical, Fhager explained that “Most of my works still share approximately the same measurements: around 80 cm across. These dimensions are largely dictated by the resolution of the video game screens I use as the source of my motifs, usually 256 x 240 pixels.” A solo exhibition called GAME OVER at the Textile Museum of Sweden in 2016 boasted five pieces measuring almost two meters across each. “Experiencing my own, and the viewers’, impressions of these towering, cross stitch pieces filling up an entire room strengthened my belief in the timeless appeal of gaming aesthetics and handmade needle point craft.”