Gunnel Wåhlstrand @ Turku Art Museum, Finland

Gunnel Wåhlstrand 

Turku Art Museum 

Through 14 September 2025 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND 

Photographer: Mikael Olsson 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND 

Rose, 2020 

Ink-wash on paper, 125 x 154 cm

Private Collection

Photograph: Jean-Baptiste Béranger

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

Wave, 2015

Ink-wash on paper, 245 x 160 cm

Private Collection

Photograph: Per-Erik Adamsson

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

The Last Island, 2012 

Ink-wash on paper, 157 x 218 cm

Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm 

Photograph: Jean-Baptiste Béranger

Gunnel Wåhlstrand, one of Sweden’s most prominent contemporary artists, is known for her large-scale ink-wash paintings that depict memories, people, and landscapes with photographic precision and poetic sensitivity. Her works are rooted in her own personal history and explore memory, the connections between past and present, and the quiet depths of human existence.

Painting with ink on large paper is a slow, meditative process that demands the utmost precision. Gunnel Wåhlstrand does not paint the darkest darks right away; instead, the lights, shadows, and subtle tones in between emerge from the interplay between the saturation of the ink, the many transparent layers, and the light-bearing space of the paper. The irreversible method allows no room for error, and being aware of these risks helps the artist maintain focus. Through patient repetition, Gunnel Wåhlstrand creates mesmerizingly beautiful worlds that convey a sense of intense presence. Gunnel Wåhlstrand can spend up to six months committed to each painting, and her production is purposefully sparse—54 works in the past 23 years. 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

Mother Profile, 2009

Ink-wash on paper, 188,5  x 137,5 cm

Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm 

Photograph: Björn Larsson

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

White Peacock, 2007-2009

Ink-wash on paper, 109 x 160 cm 

Private Collection

Photograph: Björn Larsson

Gunnel Wåhlstrand bases her work on her personal history, photographs from her family album, and, more recently, her own snapshots of places saturated with memory. For over a decade, her art has sought to bridge the distance to her father, who took his own life when she was just one year old. His death was not talked about in the family, and even as a child, Gunnel Wåhlstrand turned to old family photographs in an attempt to understand him. The large scale of the paintings and the painstaking working method evolved from the artist’s deep need to linger in the process and immerse herself in the world of these images. Transcending time and space, her paintings interweave the gazes of different generations—gazes shaped by absence and distance. In her more recent works, the artist’s own experiences and memories of the photographed places merge with the intimate, inner world of the painted landscapes. The linear passage of time seems to shift, as if opening toward eternity.

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

Långedrag, 2004

Ink-wash on paper, 209 x 157 cm / 192 x 140 cm 

Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm 

Photograph: Björn Larsson

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

The Desk, 2004 

Ink-wash on paper, 206 x 157  cm

Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation 

Maria Bonnier Dahlins Stiftelse 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

By the Window, 2003

Ink-wash on paper, 151 x 198 cm

Collection Michael Storåkers 

Photograph: Björn Larsson

The artist’s first solo exhibition in Finland presents works spanning her entire career from 2002 to 2023. The works are on loan from private and public collections, including Andréhn-Schiptjenko Gallery, the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation, Magasin III Museum of Contemporary Art, Malmö Art Museum, the Nordic Watercolour Museum, and the Sten A. Olsson Foundation. The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde and curated by Selina Kiiskinen and Kari Immonen from Turku Art Museum.

Gunnel Wåhlstrand (b. 1974, Uppsala) lives and works in Stockholm. She made her breakthrough immediately after graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 2003. Her recent solo exhibitions have been held at Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde (2024), Gothenburg Art Museum (2019), Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam (2017), and Magasin III in Stockholm (2017).

TURKU ART MUSEUM

Aurakatu 26, 20100 Turku

turuntaidemuseo.fi

Gunnel Wahlstrand

Turku Art Museum , 6 June –14 September 2025

Kjell Strandqvist @ Berg Gallery, Stockholm - "Mallar 1991" Exhibition

Kjell Strandqvist: Mallar 1991

Berg Gallery, Stockholm

16 January - 15 February, 2025

Kjell Strandqvist’s paintings often combine the defined with the undefined, frequently utilizing a distinct, simple form as a vessel for coloristic events. His colors possess a dense, imaginary relationship that is sometimes more felt than seen. In his first exhibition at Berg Gallery, he presents a series of paintings under the common title Mallar (’Templates’). The works were originally shown in 1991 at Galerie Aronowitsch in Stockholm, where Kjell Strandqvist exhibited on a regular basis between 1983 and 2009. Yet, these works possess a distinctly timeless quality. The compositions show softly defined rectangular fields in muted colors – like the hues of nature at twilight – surrounded by edges that have been left unpainted, revealing the white canvas.

Kjell Strandqvist describes the works in the exhibition as follows: 

”Stencils cut from copper printing paper, placed on a horizontal canvas and filled with color, then lifted off before the paint is fully dry. When diluted acrylic paint accumulates and dries uncontrollably, it creates islands dense with pigment – a kind of nature. The paint seeps beneath the stencil, deforming the otherwise strict configuration. Its simple geometry acquires an organic character through the behavior of the pigment. The formations of the painting sometimes extend to the outer edges of the square, leaving an uneven white margin. Certain combinations occasionally create asymmetric coloristic encounters. The slightly deformed appearances created by the stencils recalled some sort of essence, overgrown architecture, peculiar shapes.”

Kjell Strandqvist (b. 1944, Härnösand) lives and works in Stockholm. His artistic career spans more than five decades and includes a large number of solo and group exhibitions throughout Scandinavia and Europe. Previous solo exhibition venues include Galerie Aronowitsch, Stockholm (2009, 1997, 1994, 1992, 1985, etc.), Kungl. Konstakademien, Stockholm (2019, 2014, 2013, 2004), Galleri Mariann Ahnlund, Umeå (2007, 2001, 1992), Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm (2003, 1988), i8 Gallery, Reykjavik (1999) Centre Culturel Suédois, Paris (1984), and Galleri Olsson, Stockholm (1982). In addition to his artistic practice, Kjell Strandqvist served as a professor at The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm from 1986 to 1996. He has also been a board member of Moderna Museets Vänner, Maria Bonniers Dahlins Stiftelse, and The Academy of Fine Arts. From 1998 to 2006, he worked as a project leader at Statens Konstråd / Public Art Agency Sweden.

BERG GALLERY

Hudiksvallsgatan 8, 11330 Stockholm

www.berggallery.se

Just like in a mirror – portraits over five centuries @ Nationalmuseum Jamtli, Östersund

Just like in a mirror – portraits over five centuries

Nationalmuseum Jamtli, Östersund

Through 9 March 2025

David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl 

Self-portrait with allegories, 17th-century 

Photo: Anna Danielsson/Nationalmuseum 

Laila Prytz 

Birgit Nilsson (1918-2005), opera singer, 1964 

Oil on masonite

Photo: Linn Ahlgren/Nationalmuseum

Per Krafft d.y 

The Demoiselles Charlotte Jeanette and Anne Sofie Laurent, 1815 

Oil on canvas 

Photo: Erik Cornelius/Nationalmuseum

The exhibition Just like in a mirror – portraits over five centuries presents men, women and children who lived in or served Sweden from the 16th century to the present day. Not all the subjects were born in the country, but they all contributed in various ways to its history or cultural life. Some of the artists and subjects have a connection with Jämtland.

Duskily as in a mirror, people from past centuries and from our own times can be discerned in the portraits. The paintings, sculptures and photographs are not realistic depictions, but rather images of how the subject wishes to appear for eternity and how the artist chooses to interpret this. The artworks show different ideals of appearance and fashion, while also reflecting how notions of status, social identity and profession have changed over the centuries.

In 17th-century Sweden, the court painter David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl produced an allegorical portrait of himself in the company of symbolic figures personifying painting and creativity. In the 19th century, the idea of the unworldly bohemian emerged as an artistic ideal, represented here by Louise Breslau’s informal study of her fellow artist Ernst Josephson. Others, such as Ava Lagercrantz at the turn of the 20th century, emphasised their social status by posing in lavish clothes and elegant settings. In the present day, Marja Helander’s photograph of Britta Marakatt-Labba portrays the Sami artist outdoors amid the snow-covered landscape of northern Sweden.

To this day, official portraits of the Swedish royal family, especially those of reigning monarchs, follow the portrait traditions of the Renaissance. The subjects represent not only themselves, but also their office and the kingdom. A full-length standing portrait of Queen Kristina as a child shows her holding regalia and wearing a dress of the same cut as those worn by adult women of the time. The emergence of the middle class in the 19th century was reflected in the style of royal portraits. Bernhard Österman’s 1929 painting of King Gustav V, with its brilliant use of light and colour, is akin to the artist’s portraits of other well-to-do personages. In our time, Thron Ullberg and others have taken photographs of the present King both in formal stately poses and sitting in the forest.

Bernhard Österman 

Gustav V (1858-1950), King of Sweden 

Oil on canvas 

Photo: Per-Åke Persson/Nationalmuseum 

Marja Helander 

Britta Marakatt (born 1951), PhD h.c., 

Sámi textile artist, graphic artist, painter, married 

to reindeer owner Nils Johannes Labba, 2022. 

Photograph, digital print

Ida von Schulzenheim 

Pierre Louis Alexandre, called "Petterson", ca. 1880 

Oil on canvas 

Photo: Anna Danielsson/Nationalmuseum

Scholars and creative practitioners – writers, actors, singers – are well represented in portraiture. In the past, they were often portrayed with an appropriate attribute such as a book or a sheet of music. Nowadays, photographic portraits in particular tend to rely more on the subject being recognisable to viewers, as in Sanna Sjöswärd’s portrayal of the author Theodor Kallifatides. Other artists have moved away from more realistic depictions. Laila Prytz created her image of Birgit Nilsson from blocks of colour, nevertheless succeeding in capturing characteristic features of the opera singer’s appearance.

Groups less well represented in Nationalmuseum’s collections, especially among the older portraits, include the peasantry, servants and sports stars. Examples featured here include an 18th-century servant girl, painted by an unknown artist, and Johan Fredrik Höckert’s portrait of Såsser Kerstin Andersdotter. The Afro-Swedish dockworker Pierre Louis Alexandre had a side job as a model at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, where student Ida von Schulzenheim painted his portrait.

Just like in a mirror features around 100 portraits from the Nationalmuseum collections, including the Swedish National Portrait Gallery. Although painted works predominate, photography and sculpture are also represented. The portraits are not displayed in chronological order, but instead are grouped into themes such as family, cultural personalities and royalty. The exhibition not only focuses on portraiture as a major genre in art, but also presents a representative selection of works from Nationalmuseum’s collections, many of which have not been exhibited publicly for many years, if ever.

Exhibition curator: Eva-Lena Karlsson from Nationalmuseum

NATIONALMUSEUM JAMTLI

Museiplan 2, 831 52 Östersund, Sweden

www.nationalmuseum.se

www.jamtli.com

Beate Wassermann @ Moderna Museet, Malmö - Balancing Acts - Curated by Iris Müller-Westermann

Beate Wassermann: Balancing Acts

Moderna Museet, Malmö

Curator: Iris Müller-Westermann

Through February 20, 2022

BEATE WASSERMANN

From the cycle "Balance", 1997 

© Beate Wassermann/Wassermann Estate

Balancing Acts is the first exhibition in Scandinavia of BEATE WASSERMANN (1947 – 2018). With works spanning five decades, the exhibition explores the many facets of Wassermann’s unique painting.

Beate Wassermann grew up in post-war Germany which had a strong impact on her. Her powerful, mainly abstract paintings were inspired by everyday life and the profane as well as the sacred – two spheres that she never considered contradictory. Wassermann developed a profoundly singular style of painting. In her works, often in large formats, she condensed what she saw around her into signs or symbol-like shapes.

- Beate Wassermann perceived colours and shapes as animated energies, says curator of the exhibition, Museum Director Iris Müller-Westermann. The image was her mental and directly physical field of dialogue. Her painterly practice explores the role of artist, human being, woman and mother – as in the early self-portrait “Madonna von Altona” from 1979, where the highly pregnant artist is standing in a beam of light, with paint brushes in her hair like a crown of thorns, wearing pointed, elegant shoes. Her paintings are highly physical, always with proportions that relate to her own body. Balancing different aspects of life, shapes and colours, light and darkness, the near and the distant, is central to Wassermann’s oeuvre.

Beate Wassermann saw herself as a collector, finding forms and structures in everyday life that felt familiar on a deeper level. Painting was an ongoing contemplation to her. She perceived her images as likenesses of experiences and the paintings became answers to her own questions. From the mid-1990s, when she began creating glass windows for churches and other public, monumental buildings, her paintings reached new levels of freedom and gradually lightened from within.

Beate Wassermann studied at the Art Academy, first in Berlin, then in Hamburg. She lived and worked in Hamburg-Altona and periodically in Italy. Wassermann’s work has been shown in Germany and other countries in Europe. Balancing Acts is the artist’s first retrospective exhibition, offering an insight into how her images sprang from earlier pictures, and how themes were modified and resumed throughout her career.

With this exhibition Moderna Museet Malmö contributes yet again to highlighting exciting and important women artists who have been overlooked in a male-dominated art world. In connection with the exhibition, Moderna Museet publishes a catalogue presenting Beate Wassermann's oeuvre.

MODERNA MUSEET MALMO

Ola Billgrens plats 2–4, Malmö

www.modernamuseet.se

Jesper Nyrén @ Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm

Jesper Nyrén: Elements
Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm
Through June 5, 2020

Jesper Nyrén works methodically in his choice of color and composition. He initiates his art with impressions and studies of the nature in his surroundings and from that material the creative process starts in the studio. In his third solo exhibition at Galerie Forsblom, Jesper Nyrén returns to the grid of rectangles that appear in his previous works, but the mode of procedure differentiates slightly. In his new body of work, the fields are painted on a co-occurrent uniform background, as a ground zero. Jesper Nyrén has created a composition that is both sculptural and architectural, which at the same time has a light and airy expression.

With his technique of applying color Jesper Nyrén has created different types of materiality in the separate fields of the paintings. Having previously worked with several types of paint, such as oil and acrylics, mixed with for example sand to get a different texture, he has now created the contrasts solely by painting them. With the contrasting fields of density and surface, form and abstraction, Nyrén balances the tonality in the composition and creates a spatiality in his paintings. 

There is a fine line in estimating the placement of the different elements or building blocks; if the alignment shifts, they can collapse or break. Each entity is in need of the other parts and in that relation, between weight and weightlessness, there is a tension. The law of gravity is challenged – can the sky or the rendering of it, support the weight of the ocean or the earth?

The title of the exhibition, Elements, is important by its definition, the elements or the components allude to the composition in the paintings. The title also reflects a landscape in a period of time, affected by the season and the weather. For Jesper  Nyrén the most important thing is how the landscape and light emerge in the paintings. To render a light where the elements form an entity as a whole, and with that a recognition.

Jesper Nyrén (b. 1979) graduated from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm in 2007. He has been shown in solo exhibitions in the Nordic countries, including at Norrtälje Konsthall, as well as in numerous group exhibitions and at the Borås International Sculpture Biennial. He has been awarded The Swedish Art Committee working grant, 2018–2020 and the Baertling Scholarship, 2015. Jesper Nyrén has made several public installations, among those the Karolinska University Hospital, Solna, and the subway station Gullmarsplan in Stockholm. His works are represented in public collections at Åbo Art Museum, Finland, Västerås Art Museum, Public Art Agency, Sweden and in private collections.

GALERIE FORSBLOM
Karlavägen 9, 114 24 Stockholm
galerieforsblom.com

__________________

Stephan Balkenhol @ Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm

Stephan Balkenhol 
Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm
Through August 14, 2019

Galerie Forsblom presents an exhibition with Stephan Balkenhol for the first time at the gallery in Stockholm. Stephan Balkenhol has been working with figurative sculptures since the 1980’s. Working foremost with wood as his material, he carves his sculptures from a massive wooden block that remains as foundation or a pedestal to the sculpture.  Each strike of the chisel is left visible in the raw wood, of origins as wawa and poppel.

The sculptures portray people in detail and with realistic features, often dressed in modern, everyday clothes in primary colors painted on the wooden surface. With a close to ambivalent expression in the faces of the sculptures, there is an opportunity to interpret different emotions, to identify ourselves and create a story around the works. In the exhibition, there are also reliefs and a free-standing gigantic head sculpture. The physical presence of the sculptures and their intrinsic three-dimensional form create a spatiality that is tangible.

Stephan Balkenhol’s work refers to our human existence and he has also created symbolic sculptures of Death, as well as animals, landscapes and large public installations. Working in a traditional old technique combined with a contemporary expression, Stephan Balkenhol has created his own distinct visual language in his works.

Stephan Balkenhol (b. 1957) lives and works in Meisenthal, France and in Karlsruhe, Germany. Stephan Balkenhol is educated at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg (1982) and he has served as professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe, Germany since 1992. Balkenhol has been exhibited in numerous solo- and group exhibitions around the world and his works are represented in prominent collections, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy. Galerie Forsblom has been representing Stephan Balkenhol since 2009.

GALERIE FORSBLOM
Karlavägen 9, 114 24 Stockholm
www.galerieforsblom.com

Piero Fornasetti @ Artipelag, Gustavsberg - FORNASETTI Inside Out Outside In

FORNASETTI Inside Out Outside In 

Artipelag, Gustavsberg 

June 14, 2019 - January 26, 2020 

Artipelag presents the numerous works of the Italian artist and designer PIERO FORNASETTI (1913–1988) by displaying paintings, drawings, graphic design, furniture and other design artefacts, as well as spatial installations. The show is the first exhibition in Sweden to encompass Fornasetti’s entire output, and it also includes contemporary works made by his son Barnaba Fornasetti.

Piero Fornasetti is perhaps best known as one of the most prominent names in the international world of design, but he has a versatility that encompasses a variety of all aesthetic disciplines such as painting, drawing, graphic design and furniture design. Fornasetti’s creative ideas seem to emerge from a never-ending source and he is considered to be one of the most productive individuals in the history of design, with more than 13,000 artefacts bearing his signature. This versatility is the starting point for his design concept, which is in many respects a philosophical reflection of what it is like to be a human being during the 20th century.

PIERO FORNASETTI : BIOGRAPHY 

Piero Fornasetti was born in 1913 in Milan, and he remained faithful to the city for most of his life. The duality of Milan, with its historical monuments combined with a modern commercial centre, was an important source of inspiration in Fornasetti’s creative work.

Piero Fornasetti started his career with art studies at the Accademia di Brera in Milan in 1930, which he discontinued prematurely in 1932 since he was unhappy with the tuition. He started to study handicrafts instead but continued to paint for his entire life. His début was in the borderland between painting and handicraft, with printed silk scarves at the Triennale design exhibition in Milan in 1933, which attracted the attention of the architect Giò Ponti. Ponti was one of the most prominent cultural figures of the time, and he was also editor of the magazines Domus and Stile, where Fornasetti was published.

In 1940 Italy was at war, and Piero Fornasetti went into exile in Switzerland from 1943 to 1946. He settled in Switzerland, where he was to focus his interest on drawing, which resulted in pieces including a wonderful series of black and white self-portraits.

After the end of the war, in 1946, Piero Fornasetti returned to Milan, where he resumed his collaboration with Ponti. Together they created an unforgettable number of furniture items, which were designed by Ponti and decorated by Fornasetti. In the period 1949–1952 this collaboration was extended to include full-scale interior design assignments for, among others, Casino San Remo and the cruise ship Andrea Doria.

After his collaboration with Ponti, in the years 1950–1952 Piero Fornasetti further developed his own iconography, not only on furniture and interior furnishings, but also on plates, cups and a variety of other everyday items. The first plate of the series Tema e Variazioni (Themes and Variations), with the famous opera singer Lina Cavalieri’s face in various appearances, was added to the collection in 1951 and became one of Fornasetti’s most successful motifs.

He opened his own shop in Milan in the 1950s, with the aim of reaching a bigger, international audience to make design more democratic in line with the spirit of the age. This formed the basis of Fornasetti’s international breakthrough during the 1960s.

After a number of successful decades, the company suffered a crisis in the 1970s, although it was only to be a short one. The Post Modernist movement’s interest in decoration and storytelling highlighted Fornasetti as an important role model. The entry of his son, Barnaba Fornasetti, into the company in 1982 was also an important event. Barnaba continued to develop his father’s iconographies, and started working as a curator in the production of exhibitions. This has resulted in a diversity of Fornasetti exhibitions all over the world, including a major retrospective exhibition at the Victoria & Albert in London in 1991–1992. After Piero’s death in 1988, Barnaba took over creative responsibility, and this remains the case to this day.

The title of the exhibition, FORNASETTI Inside Out Outside In, refers to the flowing creativity and rich imagination within the artist, but also to the way he applies technical proficiency to process his visions and depict the modern reality. This dual movement is a central feature of Fornasetti’s entire artistic work.

ARTIPELAG

Artipelagstigen 1 - 13440 Gustavsberg

www.artipelag.se

Ernst Billgren @ Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm

Ernst Billgren: 10 200
Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm
Through February 15, 2019

Ernst Billgren is one of Sweden's most appreciated and recognized artists. With a unique artistic approach, he has continuously reinvented himself throughout his career. Familiar motifs deriving from art history, such as landscapes and wild animals, recurs in his paintings. Mythological themes as well as humoristic and satirical elements are also present in his works. Ernst Billgren challenges the distinction between high and low, good and bad, through the means of art.

Exploring the importance of the ego and artistic expression, Ernst Billgren also created art as his alter ego Wilhem von Kröckert, questioning his own identity. What is art and where do the motifs stem from? What is Ernst Billgren’s signature trait? Where do our preferences, choices and taste originate from? What might be socially conditioned and what is due to genetics? Questions like these are examined in Ernst Billgren's practice. The exhibition at Galerie Forsblom shows a continuation of Ernst Billgren‘s previous body of works. It's not just Ernst Billgren nor von Kröckert, but rather the work of a single artist where elements of them both are present. The works are spontaneous, without the use of other reference images, aiming to disconnect from the outside world and to channel imagery from within. Ernst Billgren examines his possibilities as an artist and explores the pre-existing conditions. Like a director he exposes himself to situations and challenges the creative process.

A recurring motif in the works is a city landscape, seemingly deserted except for a few animals and characters. Is it a utopia or a dystopia, a premonition? Other themes are dream-like and otherworldly. The paintings are rich in detail, with distinctive brush strokes and a flow of light alluding to the dusk in a Turner painting. References to art history appear albeit unintentional – it is the art itself that is significant.

Ernst Billgren is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice extends to painting, sculpture, scenography and writing. Born in Stockholm in 1957, he has studied at Akademin Valand in Gothenburg and at Birkagården in Stockholm, Sweden. He has exhibited extensively in Sweden as well as internationally and his work is included in prominent public collections such as the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland and the National Museum of Art, Oslo, Norway.

GALERIE FORSBLOM STOCKHOLM
Karlavägen 9, 114 24 Stockholm
www.galerieforsblom.com

Veikko Hirvimäki @ Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm

Veikko Hirvimäki: Past and Present
Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm
January 18 – February 17, 2019

Galerie Forsblom presents for the first time at the gallery in Stockholm, the well-established Finnish artist Veikko Hirvimäki. Hirvimäki started his career as a painter but it was his three-dimensional sculptures that made him famous in the 1980’s. Since the millennium, he has worked with wood as the primary material in his sculptures. With rough strokes and color on the raw wood, utilizing seemingly simple means, the animals and creatures he portrays are personal and palpably present.

Veikko Hirvimäki’s connection to nature and great interest in shamanism and mythology is a significant part of his works. In his installations, he brings the animals to life and some of them literally run through the white walls into the gallery space. It is like a collision between nature and culture, our history and our own time, past and present, as the exhibition title indicates. Interpreting his works by animism, the animals and nature can be understood to have souls, just like human beings. The sculptures can also be read with a sense of humor and with intrinsic human characteristics or specific qualities; as sly as a fox, agile as a cat or wise as an owl, like in the myth of the fables. The sculptures mounted directly on the walls recall hunting trophies, but here the animals are depicted fully alive, caught in the moment of action.

Veikko Hirvimäki’s upbringings in the countryside of Petäjävesi in the midst of Finland has influenced his art and sculptures. Nature lies close to his heart, as well as the preservation of the earth’s resources. Hirvimäki’s works connect to the modern man, but at the same time remind us of our heritage, our history, while telling us his story.

During his career, Veikko Hirvimäki (b. 1941) has been commissioned to create numerous public sculptures including at the City Hall, Äänekoski, Finland, the Children’s Hospital and the Parliament, Helsinki, Finland to name a few. His works have been exhibited in Finland and in Europe and are represented in prominent public collections such as the Saastamoinen-Foundation, Espoo, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland and the Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden. Veikko Hirvimäki is based in Ballaigues, Switzerland and spends the summertime close to his childhood home in Petäjävesi, Finland. Galerie Forsblom has been representing Veikko Hirvimäki since 1985. 

GALERIE FORSBLOM
Karlavägen 9, 114 24 Stockholm
www.galerieforsblom.com

Johannes Hägglund @ Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm - Happy Without You

Johannes Hägglund: Happy Without You

Galerie Forsblom Stockholm

9 November – 21 December, 2018

Johannes Hägglund works with abstract painting in which texture and composition have a clear presence. The paintings are based on an organic construction in which form and color take precedence over the selected motif. He approaches painting as a process, in which he first sketches with ink on paper and then transfers colors and patterns to the canvas. The challenge lies in creating the same feel on canvas as on paper. Brush strokes have powerful energy and movement, and the pattern must continue in a repetition beyond the canvas frame. References to various ornaments and decorations recur, along with a love of gingerbread trim, pastels, and Basset’s Allsorts wine gums.

Color composition has deep significance in Johannes Hägglund’s work. Primary and complementary colors intermingle with one another and common shapes such as ovals, circles, rhombuses and squares are depicted, but without perfectionism. Spatters of color are permitted to remain; childlike elements and the artist himself become part of the work. Nothing should be too perfect or corrected. In one painting, a circle is unexpectedly transformed through the addition of two straight lines and one curved one: Johannes Hägglund recreates the smiley face and elevates its meaning. Sometimes the shapes are intentionally cut in half, forming a type of punctum. It chafes a little bit, which is entirely the point.

JOHANNES HAGGLUND (b. 1993) studied at the Gerlesborg School in Stockholm. After completing his bachelor degree he entered the Master Programme in Fine Arts at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, which will be completed in 2020. His work has been shown at the bachelor degree exhibition at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in 2018 and at Liljevalchs Spring exhibition 2017 in Stockholm. The exhibition at Galerie Forsblom is his first solo presentation.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Karlavägen 9, 114 24 Stockholm

www.galerieforsblom.com

Johan Thurfjell @ Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm

Johan Thurfjell, "The First Sculpture"
Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm 
January 11 - February 17, 2018

JOHAN THURFJELL is known for his lyrical and suggestive works that, in their reduced form, convey a strong narrative content, evoking sagas and fables, fears and fantasies. Regardless of his choice of material or technique Johan Thurfjell’s sculptures, paintings, video works and installations show a dexterity and pleasure in his craftsmanship.

For his new exhibition at Galerie Nordenhake Johan Thurfjell forgoes his previous use of mise-en-scène as a story-telling device. Instead he explores the role of sculpture as a cultural indicator in its earliest and most primitive iterations and examines the communicative potential of form-making as an essentially human endeavour.

Working primarily in papier-mâché and clay, in a palette of plain white and painted greyscale, Johan Thurfjell carefully renders the most basic material from an elemental landscape - sticks and stones - to explore the point at which raw material becomes sculpture; when nature becomes culture.

The process of transition from nature to culture, indicated in the title of Claude Levi-Strauss’s pioneering anthropological classic “The Raw and the Cooked,” is illustrated in the working of a branch to fuel, fuel to fire and fire to hearth, creating a symbol for not only warmth and food preparation but also community and by extension, society. Rendered here in marble-white, the campfire is accompanied by other signs of life: through a small intervention two sticks from the forest floor are arranged into an arrow to indicate direction; in Giant a group of rocks placed in a precarious pile become a cairn, while a standing bundle of sticks and branches bound together suggest a figure in Stick Man. With the simplest of means these first sculptures assume the communicative signs of human existence in an otherwise primordial landscape.

JOHAN THURFJELL, born 1970, lives and works outside Stockholm. He has produced some notable site-specific works, most recently for The Jewish Museum c/o The German Church in Stockholm (2017), connected to the work Navigators exhibited at Espace Mira, Porto and Galerie der Künstler, Munich (2015-2016) and a work made at Strängnäs Cathedral (2011). Solo exhibitions include Sweetest Thing, Uppsala Konstmuseum (2011), Dim Bearing, Eskilstuna Konstmuseum (2011), Jim's Room, Magasin III Museum & Foundation for Contemporary Art (2007), Färgfabriken in Stockholm (2004) and Index in Stockholm (2001). Group exhibitions include Personligt, Gotlands Konstmuseum (2016), If you tell a story you add more, Galerie der Künstler, Munich and Espace Espace Mira, Porto (2016, 2015), Suecia Contemporare, Uppsala Konstmuseum (2015), OSL Contemporary, Oslo (2013) and Thrice upon a time, Magasin 3, Stockholm (2010). Public commissions by Johan Thurfjell include Byggmästargruppen, Barkaby (2015), SiS Residential home for young people Råby, Lund, Poseidons gränd, Haning (2014), Danderyds Hospital, Ward 65 (2012), the walkway to Åregaraget in Vällingby (2008) and the main entrance to Münchenbryggeriet (2006), both in Stockholm. 

GALERIE NORDENHAKE, STOCKHOLM
Hudiksvallsgatan 8, SE-113 30 Stockholm
www.nordenhake.com

Louise Nevelson, McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm - Selected Works - Sculptures and Collages

Louise Nevelson: Selected Works

McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm 

October 12 - November 25, 2017

One of the most important and innovative artists of the twentieth century, LOUISE NEVELSON (1899–1988) redefined modern sculpture and influenced artists of subsequent generations with her avant-garde environmental installations. Her best-known works—found objects such as moldings, dowels, spindles, and furniture scraps assembled into wooden or steel box structures and entirely painted black, gold, or white—defied categorization in the 1950s, but undoubtedly paved the way for what would come to be called “installation art” by the 1970s.  Inspired by Mayan ruins in Guatemala and Mexico, Nevelson’s “boxed-in” works eventually reached monumental proportions. Sky Cathedral, 1958, in the collection of MoMA and Sky Gate New York, 1978, installed at the World Trade Center, but destroyed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, exemplify the impressive outsized installations she designed for indoor and outdoor spaces around the world. Irrespective of scale, Nevelson’s work continues to have a huge impact. Nearly thirty years after the artist’s death, her masterful use of dense weighty materials to create surprisingly airy studies of volume and light appears as strikingly fresh as ever.

Coinciding with Moderna Museet’s exhibition dedicated to Nevelson’s lesser-known collage oeuvre (September 9, 2017–January 14, 2018), McCabe Fine Art presents a diverse selection of the artist’s late career works.  Five black-painted wooden sculptures made between 1975–76 are prime examples of the artist’s mature style. Nailing and gluing salvaged wooden objects into boxy frames, Louise Nevelson privileges form over function in rhythmic asymmetrical compositions. A final coat of black paint obscures her found materials’ useful origins while creating beautiful tonal contrasts as light and shadow play over the monochromatic three-dimensional surfaces. Like a virtuoso marble carving, Nevelson’s sculptures captivate with their subtle and stark shifts in tone and texture.

Also on view are four mounted collages from the 1970s and 1980s. Heavily influenced by Cubism, Louise Nevelson began making collages in the 1950s. These late-career works mounted on board recall classical European abstraction with their combinations of found objects, paint, cardboard and fabric. In stark contrast to her monochrome sculptures, Nevelson’s collages appear delicate and spirited thanks to whimsical gold flourishes and touches of color. 

MCCABE FINE ART

Artillerigatan 40, 11445 Stockholm

www.mccabefineart.com

Robert Mapplethorpe: Icon, McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm

Robert Mapplethorpe: Icon 

McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm 

October 14 - December 14, 2016 

Robert Mapplethorpe is a cultural icon. He began his career taking Polaroids in the 1970s and went on to become one of the twentieth century's most important artists. Well known for his provocative nudes, Mapplethorpe also took sensual photographs of artists, celebrities, friends, lovers, and flowers. The artist’s first commercial exhibition in Sweden features a diverse selection of portraits, landscapes, and still lifes from the 1970s and 1980s. All of the works on view, have been provided by the Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Regardless of whether or not Mapplethorpe’s subjects themselves are icons - as many are, including Grace Jones, Iggy Pop, and Patti Smith, whose portraits are included in this exhibition - his photographs are iconic in the way that they portray people, places, and things in an idealized, spiritual, manner. Always searching for perfection in his subjects (while holding himself to equally high artistic standards), Robert Mapplethorpe strived to maximize the splendor and elegance of the human body and the natural world. Carefully controlling light and shadows, he meticulously staged his subjects to enhance sumptuous textures, ranging from smooth skin and frothy water, to hard marble and soft petals. By cropping his photographs in unexpected ways, he created dynamic compositions that highlight idealized forms.

Mapplethorpe’s passionate fascination with the human body evokes Classical sculpture. His cropped nudes, which focus in on muscular thighs and buttocks, sinewy arms, or perfect breasts, are as powerful, idealized, and fetishistic as Greek Gods and Goddesses. By shooting subjects whose bodies are already chiseled works of art, Robert Mapplethorpe celebrates the human form as the epitome of beauty, strength, and goodness. His nudes are erotic, not exploitative; romantic, not raunchy. Bringing the same precision lighting, framing, and composition to still life subjects that he did to his live models, Robert Mapplethorpe likewise improves upon perfection in the natural world. Through his lens, a single delicate Calla Lily or Orchid bud appears robust, majestic, and everlasting. Instead of capturing fleeting moments, Mapplethorpe’s photographs are imbued with a profound sense of timelessness. This is perhaps why his images - so striking, so thoughtful, so perfect, and so iconic - remain deeply etched in our collective memory, nearly thirty years after the artist’s death.

MCCABE FINE ART

Artillerigatan 40, 11445 Stockholm

www.mccabefineart.com

Georg Baselitz: Black Out Paintings at McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm

Georg Baselitz

Black Out Paintings

McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm

September 2 - November 28, 2015

McCabe Fine Art presents its first exhibition of work by German artist GEORG BASELITZ. Having gained notoriety and critical attention in the 1960s, Georg Baselitz (b. 1938) is among the most successful artists to come out of Germany. Influenced by folk art as well as German Expressionism, Georg Baselitz incorporates elements of both styles into a unique blend of figuration and abstraction. His Neo-Expressionist paintings, which often depict discombobulated or upside down figures, reflect complex and disorienting themes surrounding German identity in the post-World War II era. In particular, Baselitz himself is concerned with what it means to be a contemporary German artist.

The paintings  on view at McCabe Fine Art are from Baselitz’s “Collusion” series (“Verdunkelung,” in German), which the artist began in 2008. The title of this series refers to the wartime practice of blacking out windows as a means of protection against enemy airstrikes. In each painting a sketchy white figure appears frail and ghostlike against a dark murky background. Drips and splatters of runny white paint erupt from these male nudes, recalling one of Baselitz’s earliest and most well-known paintings: The Big Night Down the Drain (1962/63.) When exhibited as part of the artist’s first solo show, this seminal work depicting a topless man holding his disproportionately large penis in his hand was deemed obscene. The painting was confiscated by the authorities, and Georg Baselitz and his two dealers were fined. Typical of Baselitz’s oeuvre, which includes paintings, sculptures and prints, the “Collusion” paintings conflate history (most often, as in this case, the darkness, despair, and vileness of World War II) with a reference to his own personal history.

Given Baselitz’s strong connections to Nordic art and artists, it is important that a solo exhibition of his work is being held in Stockholm. Baselitz’s subject matter, which features soldiers, forests, woodsman and animals, relates directly to traditional Nordic painting. Specifically, several late 19th century/early 20th century Nordic painters have had a great influence on the German artist. Foremost is Edvard Munch (1863–1944), Baselitz’s great appreciation for whom is evidenced in his expressionistic style and haunting treatment of psychological themes. Baselitz’s deep fascination with Munch has even manifested itself in the form of several portraits. In addition, Swedish artists from the same generation such as Carl Fredrik Hill (1849– 1911), Ernst Josephson (1851–1906), and August Strindberg (1849–1912) are important references for Georg Baselitz. Since the beginning of his career Georg Baselitz has returned again and again to paintings by Scandinavian artists for inspiration.

GEORG BASELITZ

Georg Baselitz lives and work in Germany. Major retrospectives of his work have been held worldwide, including at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1983; traveled to Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Kunsthalle Basel); Centre Pompidou, Paris (1993); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1995; traveled to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, and Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1996); and Royal Academy of Arts, London (2007). Georg Baselitz has represented Germany at the Venice Biennale (1980) and participated in Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany (1982). Eight new large-scale works by Georg Baselitz, which comprise his series titled Fällt von der Wand nicht (Doesn't Fall From the Wall), are exhibited at the Arsenale at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). He is also a professor at the Hochschule der Kunste art academy in Berlin.

MCCABE FINE ART

Artillerigatan 40, 11445 Stockholm

www.mccabefineart.com

Damien Hirst: The Psalms, McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm

Damien Hirst: The Psalms

McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm 

August 29 - October 22, 2014

McCabe Fine Art presents the British artist DAMIEN HIRST’s first solo exhibition in Sweden. Known for producing art that breaks boundaries and explores the relationships between art, science, religion, death and beauty, Hirst has developed a wide-ranging artistic practice that includes installation, sculpture, painting and drawing. In the twenty-six years since he emerged as a leading member of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement with ‘Freeze’, the seminal exhibition curated by Damien Hirst in 1988, the artist has risen to international fame with iconic works that include the shark suspended in formaldehyde (The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991) and the diamond-encrusted skull (For the Love of God, 2007). Painting has also remained an important aspect of Hirst’s practice with prolific series including the ‘Spot Paintings’, ‘Spin Paintings’ and the ‘Kaleidoscopes’; in which vibrantly colored butterfly wings are arranged in intricate patterns and stuck into household gloss paint.

In 2008 Damien Hirst created a series of one hundred and fifty ‘Psalm’ paintings, each named after an Old Testament psalm. The works on display at McCabe Fine Art are the most significant selection of ‘Psalms’ ever to have been exhibited together. As part of Hirst’s ‘Kaleidoscope’ series, these striking pieces touch on all religions and offer a variety of readings that range from the specific to the universal. The symbolism referenced in the ‘Psalms’ evokes both spirituality and the butterfly’s natural metamorphosis. They allude to both Christian iconography, and stained glass church windows, whilst also seeming to possess the meditative abstract patterns of Hindu and Buddhist mandalas.

Damien Hirst attributes his long-term fascination with the butterfly to their universal appeal, once stating: “I think rather than be personal you have to find universal triggers: everyone’s frightened of glass, everyone’s frightened of sharks, everyone loves butterflies.” The patterns of wings can’t help but celebrate the aesthetic and lyrical splendor of life. As with much of Hirst’s work, the ‘Psalms’ also have a darker, more complex meaning. Deceptively hopeful and bright, these paintings hover between life and death. Although undeniably dazzling manifestations of the natural world, each also constitutes a somber memento mori. Damien Hirst thus raises the question of whether his chosen imagery should be considered to represent that which is beautiful, poignant and uplifting or perhaps merely acts as a reminder that all existence, while it may be beautiful, is ultimately fleeting and fragile.

A fully-illustrated book of the complete ‘Psalm’ paintings is to be published by Other Criteria.

DAMIEN HIRST - BIOGRAPHY

Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol and grew up in Leeds. In 1984 he moved to London, where he worked in construction before studying for a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths college from 1986 to 1989. Whilst in his second year, he conceived and curated a group exhibition entitled ‘Freeze’. The show is commonly acknowledged to have been the launching point not only for Hirst, but for a generation of British artists.

Since the late 1980s, Damien Hirst has used a varied practice of installation, sculpture, painting and drawing to explore the complex relationship between art, life and death, explaining: “Art’s about life and it can’t really be about anything else … there isn’t anything else.” Through his work, he investigates and challenges contemporary belief systems, and dissects the uncertainties at the heart of human experience.

Since 1987, over 80 solo Damien Hirst exhibitions have taken place worldwide and his work has been included in over 260 group shows. Hirst’s solo exhibitions include Qatar Museums Authority, ALRIWAQ Doha (2013–2014); Tate Modern, London (2012); Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (2010); Oceanographic Museum, Monaco (2010); The Wallace Collection, London (2009–2010); Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2009); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2008); Astrup Fearnley Museet fur Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2005); and Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples (2004). He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995. The artist currently lives and works in Gloucester, Devon and London.

MCCABE FINE ART

Artillerigatan 40, 11445 Stockholm

www.mccabefineart.com

Alighiero Boetti at McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm

Alighiero Boetti: Selected Works

McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm 

April 3 - May 21, 2014

Born in Turin, ALIGHIERO BOETTI (1940–1994) was introduced to the art world in the mid-1960s as part of the Italian Arte Povera movement. However, his artistic legacy extends far beyond this early association. Deliberately distancing himself from the group that helped establish his reputation, Alighiero Boetti began to explore various ways of working collaboratively in the 1970s. Realizing artworks in association with collaborators - ranging from artisan embroiderers in Afghanistan for his well-known “Mappa” series (1971 - 1994) to the Italian postal system (Postal Dossier, 1970 - 1974) - Alighiero Boetti came into his own by cultivating diverse creative activities that challenged the notion of the artist as a lone creator working in a singular style. Further complicating notions of authorship concerning artworks that bare Boetti’s signature, the artist also devised complex systems whose rules and restrictions would predetermine, to a certain extent, the outcome of his work. Relishing the uncontrollable results - or felici coincidenze (happy accidents), as the artist himself referred to them - that resulted from outsourcing production or imposing a strict systematic structure, Alighiero Boetti developed a visually varied oeuvre that is unified by the coexistence of logic and randomness. Bringing together four works from the 1980s, the current exhibition at McCabe Fine Art highlights examples from some of Boetti’s most important collaborative series.

As early as the 1960s, Alighiero Boetti began making works using fabric printed with a mimetico (camouflage) motif, notably pre-dating Warhol’s famous “Camouflage” self-portrait series of the mid-1980s by two decades. Strongly influenced by Marcel Duchamp, Boetti took this ready-made abstraction and presented it as a painting, mounting the fabric on a stretcher-like canvas. Looking at Mimetico, 1981, with its orderly and repetitive all-over green and brown patterning, it is easy to see why the mass-produced methodical design would have interested Boetti both conceptually and aesthetically.

From the mid-1970s onward, Boetti’s colorful mosaic-like “word squares” would expand into one of the artist’s most iconic system-based series. Organizing uppercase block letters into gridded squares, Alighiero Boetti spells out words, typically idiomatic expressions like “Silence is golden” or “Give time to time” in Italian. Three examples of such works are included in the present exhibition. Gian Tomaso Liverani, 1980, a delicate mixed-media work on paper is the loosest of the three and is titled for the owner of Rome’s La Salita gallery. Here the gallerist’s name is written twice across a 6 x 6 grid, legible reading downward from the upper left corner and again reading upwards (and backwards) from the lower right corner. A group of monkeys, whose whimsical presence and random configuration contrasts with the strict orderliness of Boetti’s word square, exemplifies the artist’s interest in the coexistence of order and disorder. The monkeys also foreshadow the site-specific installation Boetti made for the 1990 Venice Biennale, which featured a variety of animals (including monkeys) in frieze form. An untitled embroidered work from 1988 features Boetti’s typical square grid of rainbow block letter. An example of the artist’s “Arazzi Grandi” (large tapestries), whose format is based on a grid of 25 x 25 square-bound letters, the artist here plays with his own conventions by breaking down the main square into smaller square sections using a black and white cross (comprised of black and white block letters) to divide the otherwise colorful composition into four equal 10 x 10 word squares. Alternandosi e Dividendosi, 1989, another embroidered work, mixes the Roman alphabet and Farsi script in a nod to the Afghan craftswomen who made this and many other arrazi according to Boetti’s designs. The words “alternandosi” (alternating) and “dividendosi” (dividing) are legible starting from the upper left corner. As the title suggests, each Roman block letter alternates with a Farsi character therefore dividing the grid between Italian and Farsi.

Similar to the spirit of collectivity behind Warhol’s factory, Boetti’s practices of appropriating ready-made materials, employing artisanal expertise, and imposing a systematic structure to create his works all served to integrate the artist’s creativity with the skills and means of others. What sets Boetti’s works apart, however, is that each one calls upon the viewer to assume the role of a final collaborator. Assuming his audience’s active participation, Alighiero Boetti relies on us to play his games and decipher his codes.

MCCABE FINE ART

Artillerigatan 40, 11445 Stockholm

www.mccabefineart.com

Yoshitomo Nara, McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm - A Selection of 90’s Paintings and Works on Paper

Yoshitomo Nara 

A Selection of 90’s Paintings and Works on Paper 

McCabe Fine Art, Stockholm 

February 20 - March 29, 2014

McCabe Fine Art  presents a selection of early works by YOSHITOMO NARA. Influenced by both Japanese manga and American comic books, Yoshitomo Nara is best known for his cartoonish paintings and sculptures of children and dogs. In addition to revealing primitive versions of several of these now-iconic characters—including devilish babies, floppy-eared puppies, and lonely children—the eleven drawings and two paintings brought together here, show Nara working in a surprising loose and raw style. Dating primarily from student days at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf (1989-1993), these works describe an important nascent stage in Nara’s artistic development.

More energetic and spontaneous than his mature work, Yoshitomo Nara's early drawings are also more overtly narrative. Featuring colorful combinations of acrylic, pen, and colored pencil, the drawings often combine multiple figures, text, and scenic elements within a single composition.  Scenes such as a man swimming, airplanes flying above a city, and a boy visiting several dogs, are annotated with roughly scrawled captions or thought bubbles. Rendered unceremoniously and economically (frequently on sheets of lined notebook paper), these deceptively childlike renderings represent the unfiltered reflections of an artist on the brink of establishing his mature style. As proof, two paintings made just a few years after the drawings (There Is No Place Like Home, 1995, and Links Rum, 1999), show Yoshitomo  Nara already moving towards the stark compositions focused on individual characters with few or no narrative clues that characterize his later, much celebrated, works. The sleepy-eyed white dog in Links Rum is a particularly important harbinger of what has become one of Nara’s most important signature characters.

MCCABE FINE ART

Artillerigatan 40, 11445 Stockholm

www.mccabefineart.com

Irving Penn: Diverse Worlds, Moderna Museet Malmö, Sweden

Irving Penn: Diverse Worlds
Moderna Museet Malmö, Sweden
16 June - 2 September, 2012 

For the first time in the Öresund region, a rich selection of IRVING PENN’s photographs from some of his most famous serial photography are presented. His innovative fashion features, portraits and still-lifes made Irving Penn one of the leading photographers of our time. Spanning more than 60 years, his career is characterised by a cool, minimalist approach to the medium. With a selection of nearly 90 works and samples from his assignments for numerous publications, the exhibition at Moderna Museet Malmö covers a broad spectrum of Irving Penn’s oeuvre.

Irving Penn (1917-2009) is regarded as one of the leading photographers of our time. He was active in both the commercial and artistic fields. In 1985, he won the prestigious Hasselblad Award. In his terse serial works, Irving Penn developed a style that is distinguished by its sharpness, detail, meticulousness and minimalist imagery. The exhibition Diverse Worlds presents photographs from his most famous series and spans more than half a century. Most of these works were donated to Moderna Museet in 1995 by Penn himself, in memory of his wife, Swedish-born Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn.

Diverse Worlds is a broad resumé of Irving Penn’s oeuvre, revealing clearly the consistent style that is characteristic of his photographs. His output is typically imbued with an inquisitive eye and attention to detail, whatever the subject matter. A discussion of the commercial-artistic dichotomy seems rather pointless in the case of Irving Penn, who balanced constantly between the two, allowing one to benefit the other. His experience and background as a painter, for instance, came in handy when he was commissioned by established fashion houses to create their advertisements for publications such as Vogue – a magazine Penn worked for throughout most of his career.

In post-war New York, many cultural celebrities visited Irving Penn’s studio. The turmoil that prevailed after the Second World War was illustrated by portraying these ostensibly immortal icons trapped in a narrow corner. Penn has also related how this corner was created in his studio to counteract his own feelings of inferiority in relation to the celebs he portrayed. The less famed were also captured by Irving Penn’s camera, including small tradesmen in London and Paris, and members of Hell’s Angels in San Francisco. Life’s transience is distinctly visualised in many of the still-lifes Penn made in his career – often commissioned by fashion houses but also as part of his own projects.

Despite the variation in these pictorial series, Irving Penn’s oeuvre, and the presentation in Diverse Worlds, reveals a consistent curiosity and desire, and a wish to depict the divergent subjects in the same sensitive and detailed way. He achieved this by placing them all in the same setting. Different image worlds meet and are literally constructed in the same neutral space – Irving Penn’s studio.

Curators: Andreas Nilsson and John Peter Nilsson

Moderna Museet Malmö

Ola Billgrens plats 2–4, Malmö
www.modernamuseet.se

Yoko Ono: Grapefruit, Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Yoko Ono: Grapefruit

Moderna Museet, Stockholm

6 June – 16 September 2012

YOKO ONO is a pioneer of conceptualism and the international Fluxus movement, and has been sharing her message of peace and love with the world for nearly 60 years. The Moderna Museet exhibition highlights Yoko Ono’s book Grapefruit from 1964 and features selected instruction pieces that encourage new, imaginative ways of looking at life and creating art. For the exhibition Yoko Ono has made a new piece called Summer Dream and a new instruction piece, that some 20 artists have been invited to respond to. Moreover, Yoko Ono will realise two of her works together with the public on Djurgården in Stockholm during the full-moon night between 4 and 5 June.

Grapefruit is a seminal collection of texts, so-called instruction pieces, and has been reprinted in many editions since 1964.

“I named my first book of instructions with the name of the fruit I loved. Grapefruit is a hybrid of orange and lemon and to me, it represented East and West, the two cultures in my life which gave the instructions the power of the Universe. Have fun with it.” Yoko Ono

In the 1950s, Yoko Ono had already begun experimenting in the borderland between music, performance, poetry and visual art. She used the concert and event formats as a place where the audience was encouraged to enact her ideas, or simply to think and develop them in their own minds. With a background in classical music composition and studies in philosophy, Yoko Ono began writing “scores” for art, that is, instructions that could be interpreted again and again by audiences and colleagues. In each new context, new expressions and nuances arise, depending on who is doing it and where. Yoko Ono’s practice is therefore a unique prelude to conceptualism, which emerged in the 1960s. In an era of radical change, artists were eschewing the notion that art was primarily physical objects to be produced and consumed. They challenged the traditional art concept and began working with ideas, sounds, actions and time as artistic materials. Language became a key element.

“Grapefruit is undoubtedly one of the world’s ten best artist’s books. It has everything – humour, poetry and breathtaking, inspiring ideas. With her experimental films and instruction pieces, Yoko Ono is a unique voice in 1960s avant-garde art. And as a woman and conceptual artist, she is a strong role model for a new generation of artists”, says Cecilia Widenheim, curator of the exhibition.

One of Yoko Ono’s most famous instructions is Cut Piece from 1964, which the artist herself has performed on several occasions. The enacted situation consists of Yoko Ono sitting on a stage before an audience, with a pair of scissors in front of her, inviting the audience to cut pieces from her clothing. Filmed documentations of Cut Piece, from 1965 and 2003 and several of Yoko Ono’s legendary Fluxfilms will be shown in the exhibition at Moderna Museet. Yoko Ono’s films have a unique position in 1960s experimental film-making. Several of them are based on instructions published in Grapefruit – for instance, the film No. 1 (Match), which is based on the text Lighting Piece from autumn 1955: “Light a match and watch till it goes out.”

For the exhibition at Moderna Museet, Yoko Ono has written a new instruction, Search for the Fountain. The text has been sent to some 20 artists who have been invited to respond to the text in various ways. Search for the Fountain is a distinct example of how Yoko Ono intentionally lets the materialisation of her artistic ideas lie open to interpretation, but also how she assumes that viewers will handle and reinterpret the concept from their own perspectives. Among the participating artists are VALIE EXPORT, Tris Vonna-Michell, Julieta Aranda, Simone Forti and Emily Roysdon. 

Curator: Cecilia Widenheim

MODERNA MUSEET

Exercisplan 4, 111 49 Stockholm

www.modernamuseet.se

Sturtevant: Image over Image, Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Sturtevant: Image over Image

Moderna Museet, Stockholm 

17 March – 26 August 2012

Clone, doppelgänger, reflection? Sturtevant is one of the great enigmas of the art scene. For half a century she has challenged the meaning of art and what it entails to be an artist. Her legendary repetitions of works by Warhol, Duchamp, Beuys and others were groundbreaking, and her work continues to be exceedingly poignant in our digital era of abundance, copies, clones and increasingly complex issues concerning commodities and copyright.

The exhibition Sturtevant: Image over Image at Moderna Museet allows her oeuvre to display its full range. The presence of Sturtevant’s works becomes nearly site-specific in six of the 18 rooms that are usually dedicated to the permanent collection. The artists whose works she has repeated largely overlap with the history of Moderna Museet and its unique collection of Marcel Duchamp, American pop art and minimalism. Moderna Museet also has a history of confronting authenticity – from important replicas to the project Museum of the Fakes which was shown within the exhibition She – A Cathedral in 1966, and the now internationally infamous Brillo boxes. Curator of the exhibition Fredrik Liew says:

“Sturtevant is a pioneer who, at the age of 82, is at the height of her career. She was ridiculed when she made her debut in 1965, and no one at the time made the links between her work and a critical discussion of surface, product, copyright and autonomy. Nor did anyone consider what it could mean that a woman artist was repeating the works of male colleagues. But then, her repetitions came before Barthes, Foucault, Deleuze, Millet and Greer had published their seminal works on these subjects.”

Since 2000, Sturtevant has made several video installations in which she combines mass media images with her own filmed material in a collage-like format. These works emphasise how her oeuvre extends beyond the internal affairs of the art scene. Sturtevant’s harsh and critical gaze is aimed at a lazy society that is increasingly made up of superficiality and experience industry. As Sturtevant herself comments:

“What is currently compelling is our pervasive cybernetic mode, which plunks copyright into mythology, makes origins a romantic notion, and pushes creativity outside the self. Remake, reuse, reassemble, recombine – that’s the way to go.”

The exhibition Sturtevant: Image over Image features 30 works, including her repetitions of Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns and Félix González-Torres, and four of her most recent major video installations. The artist has produced no less than four works specifically for this exhibition – among them a series of repetitions of Marcel Duchamp’s Fresh Widow in the Moderna Museet collection.

Sturtevant was awarded the Golden Lion for her lifetime achievement in art at the Venice Biennale in 2011.

A richly-illustrated catalogue in English and Swedish will be produced in conjunction with the exhibition, and is published jointly by Moderna Museet, JRP Ringier and Kunsthalle Zürich. It is designed by Johanna Lewengard, and contains essays by Fredrik Liew, Daniel Birnbaum, Stéphanie Moisdon, Bruce Hainley and Paul McCarthy.

The exhibition Sturtevant: Image over Image is produced by Moderna Museet in collaboration with Kunsthalle Zürich where it will be on display 17.11 2012 – 20.1 2013.

Curator: Fredrik Liew

MODERNA MUSEET

Exercisplan 4, 111 49 Stockholm

www.modernamuseet.se