”Parkliv”

Paola Pivi
Paola Pivi, Untitled (Slope), 2010, image: Marabouparken

The parks that surround some museums isolate art into objects of formal delectation. Objects in a park suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art.
—Robert Smithson, ”Cultural Confinement” (1972)

Sweden, the land of near perfect summers, lush outdoor environments and carefree activities. The tourist bureau is, rare for tourist bureaus, not lying. Marabouparken’s group exhibition “Parkliv” (“Park Life”) took advantage of the generous expanse that surrounds its Stockholm-suburban art space, sharing a diverse collection of works displayed both inside the gallery and spread among their impressive garden. More »

Published on september 13, 2010.
Art ArtSlant Exhibition Review
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Gunilla Klingberg, Parallelareal Curry Lines

Gunilla Klingberg
Gunilla Klingberg, Parallelareal Curry Lines, 2010, image: Galerie Nordenhake

Stockholm-based Swedish artist Gunilla Klingberg presents an installation with five accompanying art objects reminding art lovers why it remains important to personally experience art in real life. The focus of this examination is on Klingberg’s oversized display of red grid lines entitled Parallelareal Curry Lines, 2010 that make their way across Galerie Nordenhake’s floor, creeping up walls and weaving their way through the open space. Many artists possess a longstanding historical and intrinsic interest in the occult, superstition and spirituality; Klingberg’s installation consisting of these fiery markers of vinyl tape persuade the viewer to consider Manfred Curry’s mystical invention of curry lines. Once used to help decipher the world’s electromagnetic energies―both positive and negative―through dowsing, these rods were part of an effort to unleash or locate natural phenomena buried within. More »

Published on september 13, 2010.
Art ArtSlant Polaris Series
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Vee Speers, ”The Birthday Party”

Vee Speers
Vee Speers, Untitled #30, 2007, image: Fotografiska Museet

Children can be forced to grow up at a lightning pace, for both wanted and unwanted exposures plague the false purity attributed to childhood. Vee Speers in her latest exhibition ”The Birthday Party” at Stockholm’s newly opened Fotografiska Museet presents more than a dozen oversized, illuminated portraits of costumed children, decorated in the light of pastels and creams, sharing the stage with well-chosen props, objects of shock and intrigue—even limp feral creatures. Not the cheerful embodiment of innocence, these children often allude to darker actions, discontented realities. Yet, they look as if en route to some fantastical version of a birthday party, even if it turns out to be nothing they’ve yet experienced or imagined. More »

Published on augusti 9, 2010.
Art ArtSlant Exhibition Review
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Anders Petersen, From Back Home

Anders Petersen
Anders Petersen, From Back Home, 2008, image: Anders Petersen

Well-known Swedish photographer Anders Petersen has been taking photographs since he left home at eighteen, beginning in Hamburg, Germany in the ’60s with outsider figures and acquaintances at a bar called Café Lehmitz, leading up to his latest show at Stockholm’s Fotografiska Museet displaying a fine-tuned collection of 100 black and white photographs taken in Värmland, Sweden. With so many photographs displayed side by side, it is easy to overlook some, focusing more on others that more permanently find their way into the viewer’s domain of interest. More »

Published on augusti 9, 2010.
Art ArtSlant Polaris Series
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Catherine Wagner, My New Job

A public document and a relaxed collection of intimate poetry fusing arguments, personal writing exercises, confusions, clarifications and candid declarations, Catherine Wagner’s My New Job wears many faces: a seductive smile, a snide sideways glare, a big-toothed grin, a downward glance, an open-jawed stare:

Just in every rathole, just trying to learn everything at once
I was learning everything at once

The poet–sometimes sexual and raw, occasionally impotent and anti-social–shares her moods without regret. Feelings are recognized, made fun of, accepted and even resented. Bittersweet yet rich, this job is one that is fulfilling and yet doesn’t bring on the guilt that comes with eating too much or talking out of turn. More »

Published on augusti 1, 2010.
Book Review Books Coldfront
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Janice Lee, Kerotakis

Janice Lee
image: Janice Lee

Much is happening on the pages of contemporary literature. Yet, it cannot be concluded that events on the page are closely inspired by those occurring in the world. Sometimes, a writer throws its readers for a loop, and it can be a pleasant sensation. Los Angeles-based writer Janice Lee introduces her literary debut Kērotakis: an offering of strangeness, constructed to allow a number of poetic voices ample stage to be heard—these creations sometimes emerge with the intention of folding in on themselves or exploding already-existing limits, reaching far from reality, hinting towards blissful escapism. More »

Published on juli 6, 2010.
Book Review Books Bookslut
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Lily Hoang, The Evolutionary Revolution

Micro chapters that can stand alone or be read in a linear fashion, Lily Hoang’s The Evolutionary Revolution is a book of sly stepping stones, stepping away from the world as it is now. The world as it is now is assumed by many to be out of our hands, something unstable, something that both affects us yet is not within our reach to fix or improve at moments of strife or general concern. Hoang’s chapters have grandiose names such as “The Imperial Council,” “Man Emerging” and “How the Sea Became Salty,” for the times beg for at least grounded, surefooted beginnings—even if many find themselves wading in obscurity after a story unfolds. More »

Published on juli 6, 2010.
Book Review Books Bookslut
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Daniel Andersson, Big Block Beauty

Daniel Andersson
Daniel Andersson, Big Block Beauty, 2009, image: Daniel Andersson

In Sweden—where public transportation is quite sufficient and considered to be superior to competing modes of mobility—it is an oddly welcome change of pace to see one’s creative focus shift towards the automobile culture. Swedish artist Daniel Andersson recently presented Big Block Beauty, 2009 alongside the work of twelve other artists in “Bilen i våra hjärtan” (i.e. “The Car in Our Hearts”) at Skövde Kulturhus. Situated in the heartland of Sweden, works in this group show expressed nostalgia towards what the car once was, appreciation for the its power and speed, as well as evaluate the environmental impact that these machines have on today’s volatile era. More »

Published on juni 14, 2010.
Art ArtSlant Polaris Series
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“Runaway Train”

Jenny Lindblom
Jenny Lindblom, Untitled (Limited Ambition), 2010, image: Bonniers Konsthall

Every spring at Bonniers Konsthall, an effort is made to share the work of emerging Swedish artists  that are considered to be cutting-edge, contemporary, and altogether de rigueur. The curators this round tried a different spin; they chose to focus on the works of eleven Swedish artists who now make work and reside outside Sweden—in other words, expatriates who have chosen to produce work under the influence of other cultures. Which begs the question: what makes these artists Swedish anyway? (Though nationality as an aesthetic construct has long passed out of vogue at places such as the Whitney Museum of American Art or at the Venice Biennale where Liam Gillick last represented Germany.) When examined more closely, does an artist possess a right or responsibility to identify with one’s origin, considering morphing notions of immigration, homeland and patriotism? More »

Published on juni 14, 2010.
Art ArtSlant Exhibition Review
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