Roger Andersson: Letters from Mayhem

Roger Andersson's book Letters from Mayhem is an artist's book made of 26 duotone watercolors, each depicting one letter of the alphabet. Printed on thick board in the format of a children's ABC primer, each letter is embedded in a fairytale setting in which wispy long-haired teenagers lie around stoned, sniffing glue, listening to heavy metal, and so on. This garden of vices overgrown with weeds and entangled vines forms a strange foil for imagery drawn from drug culture, anarchy, heavy metal, and children's cartoons, rendering every scene both innocent and corrupt. Full of messages hidden within plants, ponds and clouds, Andersson's drawings evoke a soft nostalgia for childhood tempered by images of soft-edged romantic decadence.