The evening song is a house at Hamar

The evening song is a blue heart in Heaven

The evening song is a song

we sing at night

and at the end of adolescence

He is a night wanderer in the city – a wanderer who finds marble.

In the rater grey-brown winter of Oslo city, where also people seem cold and rather grey walking home from school, work, other things and home again, from visits to the dentist or others places, and really want a warm bath and care - he walks long distances alone.

The majority wait for spring and flowers that have survived the snow, some travel away to feel the sun and soft warm sand under their feet.

He doesn’t do that. He finds marble – marble in the city. In the grey-brown he finds the white.

Like last autumn. There lay a huge lump, completely black, on a broken gray pallet, out in the city. The shape gave a first impression of a meteorite or something from another planet. Something peeled from another world. For years, people have just walked past the lump without registering anything. Black as it was, in all the gray. The pallet has given way, over a long period of time. He poked and the lump was rock hard, he poked more and it was white. Something bright white appeared. A rare white and hard marble without grey or brown veins, yes, rare.

It wasn’t from the north, he knew that. There is no such hard, white marble here.

Such a huge lump, perhaps 300 kilos, is not exactly carried around in one’s pocket as a night walker. No owner was in sight, it was completely abandoned. It just lay there and had been there for a long time.

You have no idea, he wanted that lump so badly!

The lump was transported to his studio. A dazzling white world emerged, slowly, slowly, even as he worked intensely, because he chisels delicate little stems, leaves and flowers into the marble. A world far from the city and the night developed over time, almost without pauses.

When I last saw it, months later, an incredibly strange and beautiful white world had taken over the black. The white now covered about a quarter of the lump. It didn’t seem like there were sketches behind the development, but hands with tools that in a way massaged and gradually conjured up a whole new world. A dangerous beauty in a way something unnaturally beautiful has taken over. One place, something was sketched in pencil right on the marble. There was something off-center, slightly at an angle, something unrecognizable at first, where it hung crookedly on the stone. It was not a powerful form like the strong flowers, leaves and stems. There was something strangely limp and strange, it ended in a soft tip, as if the tip was waiting to be inflated. There was also something familiar about the form. (A physicality.)

I don't know what it became, it wasn't chiseled yet.

He somehow paints a three-dimensional image in marble, a little at a time, over days and months.

Sometimes it can happen quickly, as when an ordinary bathroom tile is given life by something corporeal, and the rest remains a surface.

Other times it's a piece from the street, which fits in your pocket or rucksack.

It may again end up being a crooked finger similar to his own or a toe he knows well.

He knows the city. Sharp and soft places in the city. His name is Aksel Ree and he is an artist.

On the flight Swissair Zurich – Oslo

A K Dolven. 23 April 2023