Mattias Hellberg is an artist that have a degree of Bachelor and Master of Fine arts from the Art Academy in Oslo, Norway. His practice often take the form of video installations and performances in order to create a theatrical setting in which definite, symbolic meanings dissolve. Themes such as toxic masculinity, uchronic memories and immaturity have been reoccurring themes in his work and by utilising parody and humour to deal with these issues, there is often a confusion, ambiguity and sense of uneasiness between the characters he parody and his own identity. As he refrains from being didactic with his works, his works resists to ascribe to a definite political or moral platform. He much rather position himself in what the French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard refers to as the “blurred” state, in which contradicting thoughts can be sustained in an unresolved tension. His work could be read as an extension of the absurdist tradition with writers such as Daniil Kharms and Nikolai Gogol, in whose works the narrator often loses their grip on reality. This sense of “loosing grip of reality” is a key element in his work and could be seen in his video installation “Narkomanerna i Munchs gamla lägenhet”, in which the narrator listens to the screams from the junkies living next door in Munch’s old home turned rehabilitation centre. The screams eventually enter into the narrator’s dreams and give voice to surreal characters that challenge his foothold on reality.