This painting features a drawing of a silhouette from my childhood in Torshälla, Sweden— depicting an old, abandoned windmill (without its wings).

The work is titled Pomperipossa, after a famous text that Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren published in the newspaper Expressen in 1976. It is a fairytale allegory about the witch Pomperipossa in Monismanien, in which Lindgren criticises her extremely high marginal tax rate. She claimed it amounted to 102%, though in reality the top rate at the time was around 87%. The story caused a stir: Gösta Bohman, leader of the Conservative Party, even read it aloud in parliament, and many believe it contributed to the Social Democrats losing the election for the first time in 40 years.

A marginal tax is the rate applied to income above a certain threshold in a progressive tax system. Lindgren’s complaint about high taxation of the wealthy echoed the neoliberal arguments that were gaining ground at the time. Yet she remained a Social Democrat throughout her life, which makes her fight against high taxes somewhat reminiscent of Don Quixote’s futile struggle against windmills. She believed she was fighting for fairness. But progressive taxation—a tool traditionally associated with socialist or left-wing ideals—is grounded in the principle of human equality. It rejects the notion that the wealthy “deserve” more. In a truly equal society, people may differ in talent, circumstance, and ambition, but no one should be allowed to hoard excessive wealth.

The work features a dried rose hanging from the top of the panel, perhaps a metaphor for the lost promise of social democracy.

The series features works with an appendix placed on top of the work or close to it. This object is exterior to the image plane, the illusionary "window" in the picture, but is still an intrinsic part of the whole. It connects or makes visible the two dimensions of an artwork - its inner logic and its relation to its surrounding.
The title references the famous Coca-Cola campaign and Immanuel Kant's notion of the thing in itself. It means that subjects can only experience the phenomena as they present themselves through perception. It is always fundamentally different from what the things are outside language boundaries - in themselves.

Res Ipsa is a compilation of works made by an act shaping the filler once it is prepared inside the frame. The works thus function as a recording device and give a statement of the event taking place while the filler was still wet.

Res Ipsa is Latin for "the thing itself" and is part of the juridical term "Res ipsa loquitur" (the thing speaks for itself), used when an injury or accident in itself clearly shows who is responsible, such as an instrument left inside a body after surgery.