Viktor Rosdahl, Ein, Zwei, Drei

Viktor Rosdahl
Viktor Rosdahl, Ein, Zwei, Drei, 2010, image: Christian Larsen

Christian Larsen’s current exhibition “In Darkness, the Embrace of the Streets” displays recent paintings by Malmö-based artist Viktor Rosdahl. One in particular Ein, Zwei, Drei, 2010 can easily serve as a striking representative of both the dark climate and bleak temperament of Stockholm during winter. Using thick layers of textured ink on canvas expressing shades of white or pale grey on a dark grey or black background, Rosdahl is sensitive to both painterly detail and emotion. Miniscule brush strokes are detectable, suggesting an apocalyptic awe when considering the work’s grand dimensions. One mood portrayed appears to be influenced by forces which are not in anyone’s control, such as inevitable change, decay and regeneration found in nature, and perhaps unforeseeable mayhem or disaster. More »

Published on november 29, 2010.
Art ArtSlant Polaris Series
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A5, ”Aeon Profit—Piano Forte”

A5
“Aeon Profit—Piano Forte,” 2010, image: A5

Works which are strictly labeled as either ‘design’ or ‘craft’ should not be segregated from the realm of contemporary art. Despite the trend to quickly locate and categorize one’s practice, creators actually exist in a melting pot which often stems from a shared goal, concern or historical influence. Academics argue that boundaries between spheres of practice are, in essence, blurred—that each ‘context’ has become a moving target. The exhibition “Aeon Profit—Piano Forte” appears to be influenced by Oulipian constraint-based practice—one which has moulded the works of many, such as writers Italo Calvino and Georges Perec, as well as performance artists Vito Acconci and Janet Cardiff. More »

Published on oktober 19, 2010.
Art ArtSlant Exhibition Review
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Sara-Vide Ericson, Liar VIII

Sara-Vide Ericson
Sara-Vide Ericson, Liar VIII, 2010, image: Galleri Magnus Karlsson

Sara-Vide Ericson’s first solo exhibition “Liar” at Galleri Magnus Karlsson evokes charged emotions. She paints like a moderately macabre Alex Katz with all the icy clarity of a Northern European. Her crisp paintings illuminate post-modern portraits, figures bent awkwardly into compromising positions—whether confined by their own solitude or in an incomprehensible power struggle with another. The bright, cool light in the paintings belies what remains unrevealed, as it seems impossible to pinpoint the relationships between figures. Yet, one senses that these rapports are either familial or sexual—always intimate and paradoxical. More »

Published on oktober 19, 2010.
Art ArtSlant Polaris Series
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”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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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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