Secret Garden, Swan I

Leonardo Vandal

Leonardo Christian Anker Amadeus Vandal was born in 1988 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Vandal is a multidisciplinary artist with prolific works and is known to work across different mediums, often integrating performance and texts into his installations.

In his own words he explains that he wants to create a language of his own and he does through the mediums that seem most fitting to tell the story as precisely as possible. Every work should be seen as a star and collectively they create a constellation, comparative to the instruments in an orchestra creating a symphony.

Secret Garden, Swan I. Made in Brescia 2019

Handmade iron and wood stretcher, dyed cotton canvas, original Cinema poster from 1960, Rome.

Available from our Stockholm Showroom.

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  • Width: 140cm (55.1")
  • Height: 195cm (76.8")
  • Length: 42cm (16.5")
  • Materials: Handmade iron and wood stretcher, dyed cotton canvas, original Cinema poster from 1960, Rome.

  • SECRET GARDEN

    The Swans at Coole

    ”We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates...

    Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.”


    Junichiro Tanizaki

    'Secret Garden' was explained as a safe haven from the everyday chaos and stress, a place for solitude and loneliness, a place for the serene and contemplative, it was at first a physical and secret place but now more a philosophy for the artist. 'Secret Garden' became an important theme in Vandal’s extensive solo show at Palazzo Monti in July 2017 – ’Negative Capability’. 'Secret Garden' and 'Incoherent Notes' are two subjects and topics which inbound most of my work and 'Secret Garden' has been a term that was first written and explained in 2015, and in late 2016 the first physical artwork was made – a three dimensional 'painting as sculpture' with an iron and wood structure covered with dyed canvas. The structure enforced a shadow to be present at all times.

    The initial idea for that work was for it to be displayed outside so that it would both receive the light from the moon as well as the sun. The original idea was executed in the early months of 2020. Where I made 'The Four Seasons' and it was then I decided to use these artworks for the Swan king. I came to think of Vivaldi and his poetry and his sad life and how he too created beauty through his instincts and sufferings. To Yeats’ poem - The Swans at Coole. How he carefully observed the 59 swans in the lake and saw how they never changed, only himself. How time is but an echo. My secret garden; my swan song.

    Do we change? Did we change? We stand by with an hourglass in hour hand watching the sand disappear.

    'Secret Garden' is a work I created upon the occurrence of finding something hidden, something or someplace that only you know of, everyone with a little imagination can relate to that I think - especially people in the city.

    During my time in Paris, I was very secluded, lonely and at the same time, I was looking for solitude. I went on adventures by myself, as often as possible to explore the city as well as the inner city of the mind. And behind all the great walls and gates there were to find, sometimes: A secret garden. A portal to another heavenly little world like entering: ’Diagon Alley’.

    Each works is a swan by itself and is collectively the four seasons.