ARTLAND

The old Art Academy-building creates an atmosphere of art history, a solemn and academic air, only by the place. The art works gets more space though and it is room for some presentations in larger scale. Some artists do their best to trash this conception of a fine room for the eternal arts. In the staircase, signaling power, Bo Christian Larsson has created an installation which undermines the aura of the place.

He has developed his own myths and landscapes in his work, often recalling subcultures. It’s full of mysterious parts. Seems to be waiting for someone special. As if we stumbled upon the essence of something, but at the same time found something disquieting  about it. Where is the intruder? Did Alfred Hitchcock move into the Scandinavian spruce forest?

The wandering life of an artist and homesickness? “Hotel”, the architectural frail suitcase by Bo Christian Larsson is a magnet standing there on the floor to Galleri Bo Bjerggaard. Soon, we can see more of his work in a solo-presentation at Kristinehamns konsthall.

In the installation ”Las Palmas” Johannes Nyholm has built a beach with fabric. There is a tennis-playing couple and another pair sitting by a table and a parasol having a drink. All dolls created in textiles too. As in my reflection from February on parasols in art, there is also a parasol here. And a palm-tree. Johannes Nyholm started making a documentary about his one-year-old daughter Helmi and ended up letting her play around a build environment of a tourist-destination in the sun. She wakes up with clothes for a grown-up woman on, breaks into a bar where the same dolls as in the installation are guests and waiters.  She drinks and drinks, eat ice-cream, dances on the bar-disk and seems to have fun, until she falls asleep again. When she wakes up the staff wants to get paid, but she leaves on her motorcycle with the wind in her hair.

A photograph by Maria Friberg shows the back of a child, sitting on top of a giant mountain of toys, belongings of a child in our Western world.

Bill Viola, USA

Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Finland

Maria Duncker, Finland

Hanna Ljungh, Sweden

Igloo. Bruno Martelli och Ruth Gibson, Britain

Levi van Veluw, The Netherlands

Maria Friberg, Sweden

Tova Mozard, Sweden

Maarit Suomi-Väänänen, Finland

Bo Christian Larsson, Germany                                                           

Anita Malmqvist, Sweden

Ari  Saarto, Finland

Tales from the Forest

Virserums Konsthall May 9th - December 5th 2010

An exhibition about the forest in the outskirts of our consciousness, the forest of our memories and fantasies. We spend less and less time in the forest and sometimes it appears as unreal or even frightening. Is the forest a part of our everyday life – do we use it as our living room? Many children never spend time in the woods, but rather in virtual worlds where they feel safely connected to others. We experience nature on the television where it doesn’t smell, feel or taste anything. Yet, the woods and the trees have a powerful symbolic force and meaning. Can we listen to the tales and incantations of the forest in an increasingly nature-dystopian world where the forest isn’t the lasting? Can the forest function as a metaphor for life? To get lost, to merge, to transform into or disappear into the forest? Where is the border between the wild and the arranged? Memories, dreams, visions and reality mingles. What it the relation between human and nature? An exhibition with suggestive features and with different stories about and from a magic, surreal, poetic or strange forest within and beyond us. What place do you and I have?

I'm really glad about this exhibition, can't wait to unpack, hang works, try out videos in their rooms or place.  

A short text in Swedish is on my website under "Utställningar", take a look.