Lars Brunström – When Animals Mirror Us

Slow movements. Mechanical breaths. Gazes that meet our own. In Lars Brunström’s installations, animals become carriers of human emotion — reminding us of what we share, rather than what separates us.

Lars Brunström works with installations and kinetic mechanical sculptures in which animals often inhabit carefully staged situations. His works function as performances or tableaux vivants — living images where movement, time, and presence are central. Slow, sometimes hypnotic motion patterns create a subtle yet powerful connection between the viewer and the work.

The Anthropocene — the age of humans — is a recurring theme in Brunström’s artistic practice. The animals that populate his installations are often survivors of a ravaged and exploited natural world. At the same time, the scenes that unfold speak just as much to intimate human experiences: life and death, grief, love, care. These are emotions that have remained constant throughout history and continue to shape who we are.

Through assemblage — three-dimensional collages — Brunström constructs life-sized mechanical sculptures. Movement is at the core of his work. Inspired by the motion patterns of humans, animals, and machines, he often isolates a single gesture: a twitch, a shift, a slow repetition. Movement is extended in time, repeated and intensified, until it becomes a language of its own — a way of working with time, and with our attention.

In the work Monkeys and Crows, Brunström explores what unites us across time. “We are not so different from who we were long ago,” he says. The questions remain the same — then, now, and into the future. Through the bodies and movements of animals, the human is reflected, and the boundary between observer and observed slowly begins to dissolve.

Lars Brunström is an artist and educator at Nyckelviksskolan. His works are constructed from materials such as synthetic fur, silicone, wood, metal, motors, clay, and fabric — industrial and organic elements that together form quiet yet charged narratives about our time, our nature, and ourselves.