2024.03.15
Hand-picked favourites from Stockholm Art Week
HAND-PICKED
FAVOURITES AT Stockholm ART Week
DESIGN
The positive impact of art and inspiring young creatives is needed now more than ever - especially as most cultural events have been cancelled, and institutions have had to close within the last year. Fortunately, with the return of Stockholm Art Week, we are starting to see things gradually lifting again, with Swedish Crown Princess Victoria digitally opening the week in alignment with UN’s global day for innovation and creativity. The focus has been to highlight the importance of art within our society, and how culture and creativity is a fundamental part of building a better and more sustainable future.
Throughout the week there have been a number of events and exhibitions both open for public viewing, as well as digitally - giving those outside of Stockholm a chance to also get a glimpse into the vibrant Nordic art scene. We have picked some of our top highlights during the week.
WORDS
Cecilia Mosesson
Jim Thorell
Market Art Fair is one of Scandinavia's leading contemporary art events, that celebrated its 15th year by announcing its first edition of Market Talks: Artists First, a dialogue between curators and art historians with various Nordic artists, who share their artistic processes and general views around art.
One of these artists was Jim Thorell from Stockholm, whose drawings and paintings have a psychedelic quality, expressed through explosively vivid colours and intricate shapes: “The way I enter the image is via writhing skeletal squiggles and veiny lines that resemble the micro interior of a body. Like the inside of a cranium or the moving parts of an ear. Some of them are landscape in the sense they have a horizon. But some are like shots of the ground. Looking down while walking," Thorell describes.
Tune into all the different artist conversations here.
Helene Billgren
Helene Billgren is one of Sweden’s most admired contemporary artists, and has been part of the Stockholm art scene since the late 80s. She works across an array of artistic mediums - from charcoal, to colour-rich oil paintings depicting women and the roles they play in everyday life. During Stockholm Art Week, Gallery Magnus Karlsson presented an intimate display of the artists current works directly taken from her studio. Using her existing paintings as a starting point - Billgren’s focus for this exhibition was about her creative process, which she represented through drawings in mixed media, and works on paper.
B-Spring 2021, Gallerie Magnus Carlsson
Youngjae Lih
South Korean artist Youngjae Lih is this year’s winner of the annual Beckers Art Award exhibition. With a background as an electrical engineer, Lih has a unique artistic approach which can be described as reverse engineering - through deconstructing technology within objects and structures, and creating new functions and meaning. During his exhibition at Färgfabriken, Lih demonstrates this idea by focusing on the Lighthouse as both a symbolic and technological phenomenon. By deconstructing its usual function as a navigational aid by the sea, he explores its multitude of possibilities as a lighting structure within the exhibition environment instead, highlighting its displacement and meaning.
The exhibition runs at Färgfabriken until 30th May.
For our second issue the celebrated fashion designer Diana Orving created a textile art installation in the temporary closed Liljevalchs museum exclusively for us, beautifully captured by Erik Lefvander. You can see more of Orvings new line of work in issue two.
Diana Orving
Diana Orving is a textile artist and fashion designer, who creates captivating sculptural compositions out of fabric. ‘In Motion’ is the title of her latest exhibition, where Orving has created a series of three-dimensional framed artworks of pleated drapes of silk, viscose and linen - which she brings to life through touches of oil paint, and intermittent folds of fabric in different formations that contrast with the straight pleats, conveying a sense of tactility and movement. Orving’s works are inspired by the body and the art of dance - in particular Ballet, due to its delicate yet evocative nature - which can allude to the slow and intricate process working with textiles, and the poetic expression of her works.
“In my works, I want a field of tension, an intimacy, to arise between the work and its viewers. A landscape to be sucked into or a volume that attracts touch. The symbiosis between tactile and the visual, of body and space.”
In Motion, Nordiska Galleriet
Read more about Orving's inspiring work in the latest issue of The New Era magazine.
Swedish 70s Furniture in plastic, steal, pine and corduroy by Andreas Seising
The 70s was an eventful era for Swedish design, with leading furniture companies establishing themselves, and gaining a strong reputation internationally. Möbeldesignmuseum’s latest exhibit showcases Swedish 70s furniture in all its nostalgic glory and variety of materials - from functional steel and leather, to playful and colourful plastic, to natural and wholesome pine. Coinciding with the opening of the exhibit, design expert and writer Andreas Seising also launched his book about the same subject - going deeper into why the 70s was such a big era in design, the political and cultural influences that characterised Swedish furniture and interiors, and the fact it's still a big trend in our ever-changing society today.
Swedish 70s Furniture in plastic, steal, pine and corduroy’, by Andreas Seising, Möbeldesignmuseet
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