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Gothenburg artist Kent Karlsson’s work extends upwards through the whole building and is exquisitely integrated into the stairwell. The ash panel in black and green is known as the Gustaf Panel and is an acoustic panel. On the panel, we can see round dots and elongated lines, lit up almost randomly depending on how the light strikes them and how they are reflected by the mirrors behind.

The title of the work alludes to a Latin text about ethics, Bonorum et Malorum – The extremes of Good and Evil – written by the Roman philosopher Cicero in 45 AD. This text has been used in the art of book printing since the 16th century and still appears in our digitalised world as ‘space-filling text’. It is used to see how a text might appear in a particular context. Nowadays, very few people take the time to reflect on the age of the text, the creator or its content. The text on the wall is written using the analogue equivalent of the digital ‘ones’ and ‘zeros’, the Morse alphabet, where the signs are ‘written’ using short (point) and long (line) symbols. Each letter has its own unique code and to write, for example, ‘point’ it is required that the code for each letter is written out, which means that the text takes up a lot of space. Text using the Morse alphabet is usually transmitted by means of sound and light signals.

The Morse alphabet was created by the American Samuel Morse (1791-1872), who apart from being an inventor was also a successful artist. There is an enchanting poetic thought behind the work, which reflects the difficulty of becoming immersed in and benefiting from text and language. If you are not a skilled telegraph operator it would probably be difficult to understand the content. If you succeed, you are faced with a 2,000-year-old Latin text that could still leave you slightly puzzled with regard to its meaning.

Kent Karlsson was born in Gothenburg in 1945. He trained at the School of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg from 1964-69, the Valand School of Art in Gothenburg from 1975-80, and at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm from 1978-79.