Jacquelyn Davis is an American writer, arts/culture critic, independent curator and educator. She currently resides in Stockholm, where she is the founding editor of the small publishing press and curatorial node valeveil. This website presents a selection of her writing alongside creative interests, such as The Polaris Series which regularly examines a selected work of one Scandinavian artist or artist group in detail. For more information, please visit i&o.
Katarina Löfström, Solo Exhibition
| Katarina Löfström, A Void, 2013, image: Katarina Löfström |
In Katarina Löfström’s third solo exhibition at Andréhn-Schiptjenko, one is cajoled by both the comfort of repetition and sensory parameters related to any given reality. Perception, after all, is adaptable and even, at times, restrained. Human beings are able to train themselves to hone attractive skills and master talents through trial and error. More »
Ulrik Samuelson, “After Nature”
| Ulrik Samuelson, Installation View, 2013, image: Lars Bohman Gallery |
Though this exhibition—an interplay between paintings, installation, and sculpture—is Ulrik Samuelson’s first at the gallery, the Swedish artist has for decades made work with a distinctive style that also characterizes his public commission at the Kungsträdgården metro station. More »
Interview with Klas Eriksson
| Klas Eriksson, Curva Viola, 2012, image: Sebastian Nitulescu |
Stockholm, Dec. 2012: Stockholm-based Swedish artist Klas Eriksson (b. 1976) has been incredibly active in Scandinavia, with exhibitions and performances ranging from participating in the Royal Institute of Art’s “Performing Recalcitrance” to the Copenhagen Arts Festival to a solo exhibition at Nordin Gallery in Stockholm. More »
“Beyond Good and Evil”
| Søren Thilo Funder, Sal Paradise, 2012, image: Den Frie |
“Beyond Good and Evil,” an exhibition named after Nietzsche’s philosophical treatise on phenomena such as how cultures lose sight of creativity and are responsible for their own demise, is part of the Copenhagen Arts Festival and shares its theme with other exhibitions, public artworks, performances, lectures, and screenings in the festival. It appears useful to slide between viewing this exhibition as both an end in itself and as a supplementary chapter of the festival’s thematic inquiry into “community.” More »
Stephen Sturgeon, Trees of the Twentieth Century
Sometimes confessing to an invisible audience, sometimes to the poet himself, the impressive poetic debut Trees of the Twentieth Century consists of approximately thirty poems and communicates that which usurps prepackaged explanations yet desires to be heard using the human voice. More »
“(I)ndependent People”
| Ulrika Sparre and Steingrímur Eyfjörð, The Leyline Project, 2012, image: Ulrika Sparre |
Displaying collaborations and artist initiatives from twenty-nine collectives including some one hundred participants, “(I)ndependent People” works against the tendency of biennials to promote the lone artist. While no collective functions without individual will, the unmapped terrain between the solitary artist and artist group seems a primary theme here. More »
Interview with Thierry Geoffroy
| Thierry Geoffroy and critics in the Blue Lagoon, 2012, image: The Awareness Muscle Team |
After attending the Reykjavík Arts Festival and viewing (I)ndependent People curated by Stockholm-based Jonatan Habib Engqvist, the French-Danish conceptual artist Thierry Geoffroy created an event which was both a press conference and participatory, action-based art event for the artist group The Awareness Muscle Team (Geoffroy, CopyFlex [AKA Åsmund Boye Kverneland], Nadia Plesner, Victor Vadil and Maia Hauser), which took place in the famed Blue Lagoon one spring morning in Grindavík on the outskirts of Reykjavík. More »
Thomas Broomé, “The Guest”
| Thomas Broomé, Shimmering Shadows, 2012, image: Galleri Magnus Karlsson |
Partially inspired by a three-month residency in the summer of 2011 at Hammars, Ingmar Bergman’s isolated estate on the Swedish island Fårö, Thomas Broomé’s latest exhibition seems to walk in the iconic director’s footsteps, with works that celebrate and reveal the intimate dwelling, room by room, as it appears in the films Hour of the Wolf (1968) and Faithless (2000). More »
“Abstract Possible” Addendum
To ‘pick’ an exhibition to highlight for Artforum does not translate into my tacit approval of Maria Lind’s decision to associate with Bukowski’s Auction House which is in turn associated with Lundin Petroleum More »
Published on March 30, 2012.
Art Commentary
Tags: Maria Lind, Tensta, Tensta Konsthall