Chart Art Fair 2024 with Steinsland Berliner Gallery 29 Augusti – 01 September 2024 Köpenhamn, Danmark
Gallery Steinsland Berliner returns to CHART Art Fair with a solo presentation by acclaimed Swedish artist Linnéa Sjöberg who will be showing a series of newly created woven tapestries in booth nr 30.
The tapestries are woven on traditional loom by the artist herself and tell personal tales of grief as well as the thoroughly human experience of coming to terms with one’s own corporeality. A chronological shift in the works’ stylings can be observed throughout the presentation. The later dated works bear titles such as I Lost Something Years Ago or Tom Vass Klarhet (transl: Empty Sharp Clarity) and contrast Sjöberg’s work from the last few years with their darker more subdued color palette and jaggedly diffuse figures which have been plucked from Sjöberg’s sketch book. Suggested is a new development for the ever-evolving artist.
Linnéa Sjöberg (b. 1983, SE) lives and works in Berlin. She holds an MA from The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Linnéa Sjöberg’s artistry is characterized by a dedicated research practice wherein her own life conditions are continuously hypothesized and put to the test.
The artist’s earlier work saw her take on performative projects lengthy enough to border on personal life chapters, in which the artist immersed herself in roles such as the striving businesswoman in Gtds4810 (2009-2011) and the unruly tattooist in Salong Flyttkartong (2012-2014). Cloaked in these characters she gathered information concerning the implications of identity formation.
In a chapter ending of sorts this information was processed and accounted for in the form of physical manifestations as varied as vacuum-sealed clothing, cardboard collages and intricate textile weavings which have become the artist’s main area of expression.
The woven tapestries by Linnéa Sjöberg function as textile archives: woven images and narrative tools in the form of words are interspersed with assemblages consisting of mixed materials. The act of weaving goes back to her childhood and runs through her family line, tracing back to her grandmother’s rag rugs that were woven together by the family’s old clothes.
Gammel Holtegaard’s summer exhibition You Too Will Get Old presents two solo shows by what at first glance would seem to be very different artists. Currently experiencing a major revival in the Danish art world, award-winning artist Kirsten Christensen (1943) presents an exclusive selection of works on loan from museums and private collectors, some of them never on view to the public before. At the other end of Gammel Holtegaard is Swedish artist Linnéa Sjöberg (1983) with a choice selection of key works from her oeuvre as her Danish debut. The exhibition You Too Will Get Old singles out central aspects of Kirsten Christensen and Linnéa Sjöberg’s art to chart the cross-generational affinity between two artists exploring the autobiographical in classical, time-consuming and carefully crafted media. Both Kirsten Christensen’s ceramic images and Linnéa Sjöberg’s woven textiles embrace a clash of tempi and materials. Text also forms an integral part of works addressing family trauma, memory and death. The exhibition title You Too Will Get Old is taken from Kirsten Christensen’s series of the same name from 1979 in which she uses her mother’s illness and dying to address death, old age and taboos about ageing at an individual and collective level. Kirsten Christensen avoids conventional aesthetics to focus on threats, taboos and discomfort. As she puts it herself: “Good taste is the biggest threat to art”.
Linnéa Sjöberg’s textile works interweave textiles, garments and small objects from her own life and the life of her family. Like Kirsten Christensen she explores death and the passage of time, as well as the passing down of family trauma from generation to generation. Whilst both artists take material from the darker side of life, they also draw strength and energy from its transitoriness and a deep-seated awareness of our capacity to transform ourselves, overcome adversity and rise from the ashes like the legendary phoenix. In this sense the title You Too Will Get Old can be read not only as a warning, but also as an expression of hope.
Kirsten Christensen’s works are at the forefront of You Too Will Get Old and fill most of Gammel Holtegaard’s exhibition space. The works include many that have been unseen since they were donated to Danish state institutions in the 1970s.
I utställningen Gör det själv presenteras verk av åtta svenska konstnärer som alla har utmanat konstens normer och tagit egna vägar. Deras skiftande stilar och innovativa tillvägagångssätt speglar en strävan efter frihet och nytänkande. Gemensamt för de medverkande konstnärerna är att själva handlingen att skapa konst är lika viktig som verken i sig. För flera av dem vävs livet och konsten samman tills gränsen suddas ut helt. I utställningen visas verk från 1960-talet fram till idag av KjARTtan Slettemark, Moki Cherry, Toxoplasma, Ragnar Persson, Linnéa Sjöberg, Renate Bauer, Sture Johannesson och Charlotte Johannesson.
Weaving, Stitching, Painting Amine Habki, Mukenge/Schellhammer, Linnéa Sjöberg Andréhn-Schiptjenko Paris, Dec 2, 2023 – Jan 13, 2024
“Weaving, Stitching, Painting” aims to explore the intersection of textiles, painting andsocio-political narratives. Through the lens of fabric, threads, and various textile techniques, the exhibition looks at many facets of the textile, from the industrially produced to the physical traces, and occasionally the expertise, of the hand, inparticular looking at its position within an expanded field of painting as well as aconveyor of political and societal narratives. Historically textiles have many times carried a strong narrative tradition, used as a tool for activism, conveying resistance, empowerment and solidarity and thus been a vehicle for lesser told or untold stories. Exploring themes of gender, race, and cultural heritage, textiles can be a potent vehicle for social commentary and a canvas for expressing and questioning societal norms. The exhibition invites viewers to reconsider the traditional boundaries that separate painting and sculpture from textile works by showcasing artworks that transcend the boundaries of traditional categorizations, defying easy classification and adding new layers of depth and complexity.
1 December 2023 – 6 Januari 2024 Our Winter Show at Steinsland Berliner Gallery Presenting:
Akay & Olabo, Anastasia Ax, David von Bahr, Arvida Byström, Ylva Carlgren, Erik Gustafsson, Hanna Hansdotter, Matti Kallioinen, Mattias Nordéus, Malin Gabriella Nordin, Oskar Nilsson, Nøne Futbol Club, NUG, Leo Park, Ragnar Persson, Linnéa Sjöberg, Gunnar Smoliansky, Danilo Stankovic, Tommy Sveningsson, Erik Thörnqvist & Fredrik Åkum.
The exhibition Burnout at Göteborgs Konsthall presents nine artists who directly or indirectly take the car as their starting point – an object that drowns in political, philosophical, and existential meanings.
Participating artists: Andreas R Andersson, Björn Engberg, Kjellåke Gerinder, Oscar Guermouche, Sara Lännerström, Yngvild Saeter, Linnéa Sjöberg, Johan Zetterquist and Josefine Östberg Olsson.
13 May – 31 Jul 2022 / Exhibition @ Nest, Den Haag
Anca Bârjovanu Carolin Gieszner Cy X hugo x tibiriçá Juliette Lizotte Linnéa Sjöberg PHILTH HAUS sWitches (Ines DeRu, Ella Hebendanz, pamela varela)
The artists in the exhibition every moment a junction present their urgent need for encounter, intimacy and collectivity. Together, the artworks fearlessly respond to the consequences of the individualistic society and appeal for action and a change of mentality.
every moment a junction invites you to follow the various trails to the heart of the exhibition, the ‘coven’. By working with or from wxtchcraft*, rituals, magic, and alchemical practices, the artists explore and shape other ways of being together. Their multidisciplinary practices move between virtual and earthly environments, draw on non-linear narratives, and integrate elements from LARP-games (‘live action role-playing’).
More information on the extensive context program, involving workshops, performances and reading groups, will follow here soon.
This group exhibition is curated by Nest together with melanie bonajo, Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg and Erika Sprey as advisor. At the same time, melanie bonajo and Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg present ‘When the body says Yes’ at the Venice Biennale. The immersive video installation is part of bonajo’s ongoing research into the current status of intimacy in the commodity driven world.
* The exhibition is the physical translation of the extensive virtual program of the Studium Generale cycles ‘Wxtch Craft’ (2020-2022) at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. View the entire program here and read more about Wxtch Craft https://www.kabk.nl/studium-generale/wxtchcraft
Shine! How to Unpack your Rainbow through Wrapping
By Melanie Bonajo & Linnea Sjöberg
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This is a package play workshop!
Live out your immobilisation fantasies.
Package play – a type bondage – is extremely playful and simple for anyone to get into – you don’t need to learn knots, and since it doesn’t press on nerve joints with pinpoint pressure, you don’t need to worry so much about nerve issues. Package play might be more commonly found in the kitchen, the post-office, or your local storage space than in the playroom. But this is a great addition to your bondage kit! Ufff, surrender, completely give up control to someone else, let yourself be bathed in a womb-like environment where you can feel safe and relaxed, give up sexual control, be playfully humiliated and enjoy the sensory deprivation of not knowing where we will deliver you and what will be unwrapped.
Maria Bonnier Dahlins stiftelse delar årligen ut stipendium till unga svenska konstnärer för att stötta dem i deras arbete. Liva Isakson Lundin och Linnéa Sjöberg är mottagare av 2018 års upplaga av Maria Bonnier Dahlins stiftelses stipendium.
Stiftelsen grundades 1985 av Jeanette Bonnier (1934-2016) till minne av hennes dotter Maria som omkom i en bilolycka 1985, endast 20 år gammal. Maria studerade till arkitekt på Columbia University i New York och rörde sig i en krets av unga konstnärer. Maria Bonnier Dahlins stiftelse har hela tiden sökt upp det nya och det nyskapande, och de konstnärer som tagit emot stipendiet genom åren tillhör idag några av Sveriges mest uppmärksammade.
Gästjury 2018 är konstnären Lars Nilsson och Jo Widoff, intendent för internationell konst på Moderna Museet.
Ur juryns motiveringar:
Liva Isakson Lundin, född 1990. Bor och arbetar i Stockholm.
”I sina installationer och skulpturala verk undersöker Liva Isakson Lundin materialens inneboende beskaffenheter och fiktiva känslolägen. Isakson Lundins verk bärs av motsatsförhållanden i de industriella material hon använder: mjukt och hårt, fett och torrt, fast och tillfälligt. Över tid ger sig egenheterna hos fjädrande stål, gelatin, naturgummi och glas sig till känna och möts kropp till kropp. I To Hold Sway verkar maktförhållandet närmast mänskligt när det ena balanserar mot det andra. Det skarpa stålet hotar att skava sönder nylonbanden som håller det uppe så att plötsligt allting faller samman. I skulpturen Past Bearing dröjer sig istället doften av naturgummi kvar. Den lutar sin slappa, tunga kropp över en glasskiva fastkilad mellan golv och gummi. Materialen samtidigt bär och förgör varandra. Vi inbillar oss att något måste ge efter och balansen brytas. Det går betraktaren förbi men ändå vet vi intuitivt att det är en kraftmätning som kommer att fortsätta länge efter det att vi lämnat rummet.”
Linnéa Sjöberg, född 1983. Bor och arbetar i Berlin.
”För ett myllrande, rikt konstnärskap där Sjöberg gång efter gång sätter sig själv på spel. Med kompromisslös nyfikenhet lever hon sig bokstavligen in i vitt skilda personas som hennes Karriärkvinnan (a.k.a. GTD4s810) en heltidsroll under ett och ett halvt års tid, sylvass i sin power dress vars olika gadgets senare kommer pryda galleriväggen som totems uppträdda på behåbyglar och märkeskläder nermalda till trasmattor. I verket Salong Flyttkartong – en ambulerande tatoo parlour där hon smyckar sin egen och andras kroppar med en halsbrytande humor som så ofta kännetecknar Sjöbergs konstnärskap. Med ett närmast absolut gehör resulterar hennes performativa praktik i helt övertygande visuella objekt i sin egen rätt, vare sig det rör sig skulpturer av rå hud fyllda med avlagda kläder och skräp i Inälvornas Dans, eller i Four Generations of Darkness, en 14 meter lång väv gjord av avlagda kläder och annat från hennes barndoms Strömsund till vävar som hennes Vikingakvinnan lämnat efter sig på Gunnes Gård, en rekonstruerad vikingaby för att bara nämna några av hennes gränsöverskridande nedslag som tar oss med på en vindlande resa i klass, tid och rum.”
6-9th of December —– NADA ART FAIR MIAMI with Company Gallery
For even more stuff find me on insta and facebook, Jag är trött på hemsidan
———————–SALONG FLYTTKARTONG RISES FROM THE ASHES ————-
Athens Biennale 2018: ANTI
Athens Biennale launches its 6th edition on October 26, 2018, under the title ANTI.
The 6th Athens Biennale flirts with the term, the attitude, the (im)possibility of ANTI, asking: How does opposition play out today? What kind of identities does it forge? ANTI deals with phenomena of normalization of opposition and non-conformity, from politics to web culture, from videogames to Netflix, from Žižek to Rihanna.
Fall 2018 will mark a decade of crisis in which Athens has been an incubator of revolt, opposition, reaction and regression. In 2017, the Athens Biennale organized a series of performative events under the title Waiting for the Barbarians, and declared a strategic postponing of AB6 in a year of “Active Waiting”. “Active Waiting” was intended as a playful exercise on the political imagination of large-scale periodic exhibitions, and functioned as a prelude to ANTI.
ANTI, curated by Stefanie Hessler, Kostis Stafylakis and Poka-Yio, considers attitudes of opposition, non-conformity and marginality. Instead of assuming a position of critical detachment, ANTI introduces us to the pleasure and discomfort embodied in both revolt and reaction. It does not seek to merely outline such fantasies; we cannot fight reactionary culture and politics in the “post-truth” era with yet another ANTI. To deal with ANTI means to oscillate between power and revolt by internalizing, reenacting or cannibalizing both. As such, AB6 is designed as a distilled, intensified reality — a constellation of functional spaces that invites visitors to indulge in ANTI. These devices assume forms of actual domains shaping our lives today: the gym, the office, the tattoo studio, the dating website, the migration office, the shopping mall, the nightclub, the church, the dark room. The Athens Biennale aims to instigate the experience of ambiguity, polarity and contrariness inherent in ANTI by lubricating the absurd personification of such currents. The exhibition, here, becomes a purgatory without a purge.
More than 100 international artists, media creators and theorists will participate in ANTI. The exhibition venues and full participants’ list will be announced soon.
Cabaret Negatif is programmed by FYTA with Nayia Yiakoumaki and will be running throughout the duration of ANTI.
Two limited-edition Crypto Certificates by Ed Fornieles Studios will be sold to help fund the production of a large-scale LARP The Group as well as the Athens Biennale itself. Collectors of these limited edition prints will be able to share future profits generated by the sale of work developed through The Group performance.
The 6th Athens Biennale is co-financed by the Hellenic Republic and the European Union through the Regional Operational Programme of “Attica 2014–2020” in the framework of NSRF.
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Markus Öhrn, The Unknown, Santarcangelo Festival. July 6- July 15
with Damiano Bagli, Federica Dauri, Janet Rothe, Linnea Carlsson, Linnea Sjöberg, Makode Linde, Mara Oscar Cassiani, Maurizio Rippa, Oskar Nilsson
A space at the edge of the forest, enshrouded in mystery, that has been created for Santarcangelo by Markus Öhrn, an associated artist of the Festival, inhabited for eight days by four Italian and four Swedish artists from different fields: dance, performance, visual arts, music. A space that is open for thirty minutes every evening, has day-to-day permanence, but is in constant, unpredictable change. Come on up and feed your curiosity: The Unknown has a surprise in store every day, an original, different, unique, unrepeatable episode that is there to be discovered only at the moment you arrive. Each night, a different artist creates a new show, but we will not know what happens until the moment when curtain goes up. A little act of faith in exchange for the possibility of losing yourself in the unknown.
Photo: Makode Linde
NEW WORK PART II MATERIAL. Exhibition view at Cob Gallery, London. Linnéa Sjöberg, Agata Ingarden. Courtesy of Cob Gallery, London. Photo Benjamin Westoby
Del 6 av 6: Textil. Hannah Ryggen och Linnéa Sjöberg. Hannah Ryggens monumentala textilkonst var banbrytande. Med hjälp av sin hemmabyggda vävstol, garn hon färgade själv och ett kokande engagemang vävde hon stora verk som kritiserade andra världskriget, Mussolini och högerextremismen i Europa. Linnéa Sjöberg blickar istället inåt med sina verk. I vävarna hon skapar undersöker hon sin historia och identitet. I programmet medverkar även bland andra Sheila Hicks.
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Beyond The Moon Opening: March 16, 2018, 7 pm HAUS AM LÜTZOWPLATZ LÜTZOWPLATZ 9 10785 BERLIN-TIERGARTEN
Participating artists: Dew Kim (Korea), Catherine Lorent (Luxembourg), Steve Nietz (Germany), Yudi Noor (Indonesia), Linnéa Sjöberg (Sweden), TcoET – The Church of Expanded Telepathy (Dew Kim & Luciano Zubillaga (Argentina / United Kingdom)
Before Galileo aimed his telescope at the moon, it was still regarded as a mirror of the earth’s surface. Accordingly, its back was considered the equivalent of the dark, hidden side of the human soul. The exhibition BEYOND THE MOON takes a look at the irrational, sometimes destructive features of the human ego. Visitors are confronted with the hidden facets of their existence, seen through the artist’s gaze. Dream and nightmare, theology and philosophy, present and future are juxtaposed and profoundly examined .
The dark side of the moon, which we never see from our earth’s perspective, stands for the unknown that we seek within ourselves and that we encounter on a daily basis. Whether looking out from your own doorstep or in the news – the echoes of wars, economic crises and dehumanization shake our faith in an enlightened, progressive togetherness. The exhibition BEYOND THE MOON explores, whether the participating artists are all skeptical individualists who react to a society and its darkest events with the desire for self-development. Or if instead, they perceive this world with an unsual sensitivity, external impressions permeating their inner world in an unfiltered manner, which then find their artistic form. There are unmistakable similarities and relationships between the works of the artists. Although they come from different continents, have never worked together or influenced each other, recurring motifs are recognizable that already appear in the melancholic romanticism of the end of the 18th century, as entangled mythical creatures, or the interest of para-sciences or metaphysical phenomena.
BEYOND THE MOON reveals a hidden cartography of the atlas of the human inner world, ideally moving out of an idyll of worldliness, turning to illuminate social developments from a normative-liberated, global perspective.
Curated by GREEN|GONZALEZ
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Nada Artfair Belenius Gallery 8-11 March Skylight Clarkson Sq, New York
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Book release “Out of Character” 23rd of January, 19-22 Index Foundation, Stockholm
The publication Out of Character presents Sjöberg’s performance work Gtd4s810 (Getting Things Done for Satan), also called The Business Woman, which took place throughout the whole day over the course of one and a half years between 2009-2011. Through a raw compact mix of private pictures, notes, sketches and art works, the book gives a glimpse behind the scenes and present a less censored image of the performed person. In a conversation with Annèe Olofsson, Sjöberg remembers the work on this durational performance work. Sophie Persson contributed an essay about The Business Woman. Graphics design by Stefan Fält, published by Nilleditions.
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“Jag har spytt tusen år av ord” at Belenius Gallery in Stockholm, up and running until December 22nd
The materials in Linnéa Sjöberg’s works meld, fuse together, and layer the past into a non-linear narrative where yesterday is as present as today and where time utterly collapses.
“To see is to enter a universe of beings which display themselves, and they would not do this if they could not be hidden behind each other or behind me…Thus every object is the mirror of all others.” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945)
The ongoing series Inälvornas Dans (TheInward Dance) consists of objects firmly swathed in, and covered by, soaked parchment i.e. membranes scraped during the manufacture of leather. There’s a certain brutality to the drawn-out process – they are left to dry either hanging or lying, pierced and sealed with metal rods, hung with chains, collars and hooks. The interiors are made up of discarded clothing, debris and twigs, erasing the boundary between intimate souvenirs and waste. Many of the works allude to a human presence – exposed, mummified pieces – saturated in the same crude, dark humour as Michaela Eischwald’s resin-filled rubber gloves or Alina Szapocznikow’s head ashtrays. Each individual work forms an ambiguous memento mori, a reminder of the transience – or the triviality – of life.
Earlier in the year Sjöberg came across the VHS archive of the German public service television channel Deutsche Welle. If her previous weaves have intensively unravelled the memory of the individual – an upbringing in Strömsund, the performance work Business Woman – then Tysk Våg (German Wave) is perhaps more concerned with collective memory. What did the world look like before we could follow a live broadcast, before we could say exactly where we were on September 11? What we see on TV etches itself into our memory, our shared view of reality formed and refined by the information sent out. In the process of weaving these stored memories are literally entwined to the point of complete erasure – no image or sound remains. The room is instead filled with long swathes of weaved magnetic tape and pieces of fur, a monument to the obsolete in an accelerated stage of synthetic fossilisation.
There’s something to Linnéa Sjöberg’s method that has me invariably returning to Joseph Beuys’s work Homogeneous Infiltration for Grand Piano. By covering a grand piano in a thick layer of felt Beuys emphasised the pitfalls of collective silence (in allusion to the thalidomide scandal of the 1960’s). Bound into an all-encompassing whole, the instrument’s parts are subsequently gagged. In an analogous gesture, if not one more personal than critical, Sjöberg wraps fragments of a collective history, compressing them into impenetrable objects. Just like the grand piano the contents are hidden and, sure enough, completely disabled.
The past is brutally wiped out, immortalised by its transformation, no possibility of nostalgic reclamation remains. If those objects that surround us are an extension of our own bodies then what Sjöberg engages in are mental acts of mutilation.
Redaktörerna Daniel Söderberg och Ragnar Persson har i denna bok samlat tankar och intryck om döden. Tjugofem konstnärer, fotografer, författare, journalister och poeter visar sin syn på döden. Resultatet är en blandning av konst och journalistik.
Medverkande: Mamma Andersson, Mattias Alkberg, Jenny Damberg, Viktor Rosdahl, Tommy Sveningson, Stefan Fält, Roger Andersson, Linnea Sjöberg, Pär Thörn, Danilo Stankovic, Oskar Nilsson, Sara-Vide Ericson, Isabella Ståhl, Per Englund, Gunnar Lundkvist, Lars Berge, Jessika Gedin, Elin Unnes, Jockum Nordström, Ika Johannesson, Lina Scheynius, Klara Kristalova, Kristian Bengtsson, Joakim Pirinen och Malin Gabriella Nordin.
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KONSTHALL RUBEN ÖSTLUND PRESENTERAR: TECKNING UNDER LUPP / DRAWING UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Fri Oct 20 2017 at 05:00 pm Konsthall, Årsta Skolgränd 16a, Stockholm
Peder Andersson, Alexandra Karpilovski, Björn Kjelltoft, Kalle Mattsson, Leo Park, Olga Prader, Max Ronnersjö, Sany och Linnéa Sjöberg
“Calligrapher Lin told me that the drawing of a sign consists of a movement and a counter movement with the brush, a yin and a yang. The sign itself has no exklusive semiotic meaning, but is inseperable from the combined motion of the arm and the hand, the brush, the ink and how it meets the surface. It does not point to anything that is not kept within its own form, which is always here and now. How it was made and continously becomes, while being seen by you. I asked Lin: –What happens if there is a mistake, a stain of ink, a blot that was not intended, is it then also a part of the meaning? Lin looked at me with lots of patience: –Then show me that mistake. Show me meaning..
The interpreter declared to have fallen in love with me and threatened to K*ll me if I ever loved someone else. I tried to suggest that love was probably something yet to discover. Could I trust the translation to be Lin’s own word, or just what the interpretor wanted me to hear?” — Konsthall Ruben Östlund in Årstaberg invites to an exhibition with nine artist, all of them with their own relation to the drawn medium. Despite that drawing arguably constitutes the core of most artforms, it’s an expression that is often mariginalised in favour of more spectacular disciplines of art.
In the exhibition “Drawing Under the Microscope”, it’s the illusoric modesty of the tiny drawing that is explored and the conditional idea about drawing as a semiotic riddle, whose components can be decoded according to lingustic principles, that is questioned. By putting the microcosmos of drawings under the microscope, we want to reveal the immence power harbored in the line itself. Isn’t drawing rather an instinctive, performative act, than an expression of the artists intellectual intentions, virtousity or free will?
Each artist participates with one or a couple of pieces, serving as a starting point for a rhizomatic chain of new expressions.
Esteban, Lin and Samuel, for Konsthall Ruben Östlund
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NSFW welcomes you to ACT III: Making Others Mad, in collaboration with 3:e Våningen and a part of the GIBCA Extended program.
Andreas R Andersson Petr Davydtchenko Militza Monteverde Linnéa Sjöberg Erik Thulén Zara Zetterquist <<<<>>>>
Making Others Mad Sep 7- Nov 3 Opening: September 7, 18-21 <<<<>>>>
<<Verse One>> Performing craft You are the first to have this love of mine Making Others Mad Rip off that straight jacket Gotta break that line
<<Chorus>> Four generations of darkness Oh your heart’s pumping gonna soon explode Fallen party Now I have you with me under my power
<<Verse Two>> I don’t yell, I don’t say anything I just leave. Making war just for fun Exloring the fire The ritual has begun Satan’s work is done
<<Chorus>> Four generations of darkness Oh your heart is pumping gonna soon explode Fallen party Now I have you with me under my power
AS IF WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE ALFREDO ACETO / NICOLA MARTINI / LINNÉA SJÖBERG OPENING: FRIDAY, JULY 14, 6–9 PM EXHIBITION: JULY 14–AUGUST 25, 2017
Lars Dittrich and André Schlechtriem are pleased to present As If We Never Said Goodbye, a group show including Alfredo Aceto, Nicola Martini, and Linnéa Sjöberg, opening July 14 and running though August 25, 2017. Succeeding the previous group show Monet Is My Church reflecting on the current state of abstraction in contemporary painting, As If We Never Said Goodbye presents positions in contemporary sculpture. The three selected artists, sharing an interest in object translation via simulated industry-influenced processes, hold independent perspectives on object-oriented ontology, from the tangible archeological and geological to the more intimate chronological and psychological. Throughout the artworks presented in As If We Never Said Goodbye, and as the song’s lyric states, there exists a certain “magic in the making” that implies mystery, a ritualistic unknown or sentimental skepticism.
Alfredo Aceto (b. Turin, Italy, 1991 / lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland) presents at the center of the gallery a perpendicularly interlocking office desk, veiled in a black deadener tar and Wyandotte Silver Pheasant feathers, titled Bulo. The varied associations – academic, bureaucratic, banal – are mutated through the object’s now pictorial-sculptural presentation. The relationship between reality and fiction is confused through the slight application of material and back-to-front repositioning of the original form. The functional object is personified and, when considering the past social traditions of tarring and feathering, exists as an object transgressor having suffered an informal public execution. Aceto often creates environments and objects where time, space, memory, and personal attachment are folded into each other. Concepts of chronological manipulation can be seen quite directly as well in his series of clocks, strategically shot, glass intact, with evident bullet holes on the frame.
Nicola Martini (b. Florence, Italy, 1984 / lives and works in Milan, Italy) presents a series of sand sculptures placed like ceremonial remains on the floor and leaning on the low walls of the room. The base material of these objects is composed of thermal sand, normally used in the fabrication of steel and cast iron, a highly industrial process. Every grain is covered with a thermoplastic phenolic resin enhancing its ability to transfer heat. Martini highlights the untitled artworks’ composite identity with fire, by burning with a gas torch the thermal sand piles, forcing the hardening process. The new form is inverted, revealing the internal side of the pile, and stabilized with epoxy resin, exaggerating the artificiality of the material. By changing the definition of the object and rendering it inaccessible, Martini elevates it from the functional, opening it to the conceptual. The series has been produced with support from Nuove//Safond, Italy.
Linnéa Sjöberg (b. Strömsund, Sweden, 1983 / lives and works in Berlin, Germany) presents a number of wall-objects strategically distributed throughout the space. The series, titled “Inälvornas Dans (The Inward Dance)” incorporates dried skin parchment made from cowhide. The material – a waste product in the production of leather – bears reference to industrial process and fabrication, while resembling qualities of the human body, internal and external membranes. Sjöberg embalms objects and material from her everyday life: clothing, tools, fur and wood are wrapped wet in the transparent skin then forced together tightly, re-configuring themselves as necessary, to fit within the bound unit, as it dries. Ranging in scale, assuming almost human proportion, the hybrid structures appear oddly totemic. As with the artist’s weavings and tapestries, the remnants of action and practice over a time are consolidated creating a condensed cosmology of performance.
A full publication in English and German with an essay will be released in conjunction with this exhibition. Please contact Owen Clements, owen(at)dittrich-schlechtriem.com, for information, images and with any further inquiries. http://www.dittrich-schlechtriem.com/
Photocredit: Courtesy DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, Berlin
Photo: Jens Ziehe
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Season of the Double Bind 03.06—22.06.2017
This exhibition displays a nuanced selection from five Swedish women (Lisa Trogen Devgun, Inez Jönsson, Klara Lidén, Hilde Retzlaff, Linnéa Sjöberg); each artist either supports or rejects the notion that they are products of their environment. Do they manage to escape influence—or lasso it? Trogen Devgun’s work emphasizes risk-taking and the machination of identity incorporating readymade materials; Jönsson persuades one to reconsider perspective and dissect structural components—objects can be reframed in one sweep; Lidén’s imperfect collages highlight the layered nature of social conscience; Retzlaff’s concrete sculptures insist upon lexicons of communication which better suit desires; Sjöberg weaves personas and hybridizes processes until they become fluid and unfettered. In this brutish era—where a call promises no reciprocation of good will—their self-consumed forays are nourishment before another decision must be made.
Seasons wax and wane—as do male/female energies and their less easily categorized offshoots. Current events fill one’s screen size of choice with confusions, cataclysms and stalemates, leaving a grappling populace with bittersweet options which do not necessarily enforce a viable tomorrow. Do we take the proverbial cookie now, or do we wait patiently like pre-schoolers given a lesson in conditioning? More cookies are supposedly available for those who follow rules, for those with manners, for those who abide by social dictations which can, in turn, impede and constrict. It’s hard not to lead you, dear reader, into some dense forest:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Yet: what actually unfolds here is not an existential poem or reductive metaphor where one path proves to be more just or sound than another; rather, I give you reality—where you may find yourself wedged between a ‘rock’ and a ‘hard place,’ where you are damned if you do, damned if you don’t. In this paradox, how does anyone, much less an artist, know whether or not to work with or against a system, and when does one decide to change or destroy it? Catch-22’s flourish in this maze. Those who utter the words “I love you” might be the first to abuse. In this place, where words and actions do not conveniently align, it becomes increasingly difficult to be ‘good’ or ‘right’ or ‘loved’ when one must also fight to be one’s self.
With any maxim or theory, there exists some equally alluring antithesis. Mixed messages ambush the senses, yet most options appear to be less than ideal. We may choose a non-committal middle ground. We procrastinate with consumerism and social media, all that culture offers (feeds?) or seemingly private diversions, or we can go inward towards a more accepting playground. Some might argue that this wavering indecision is jaded or queer, and others might declare that we are merely cowards who don’t know how to move forward. We grow impatient; we hit another dead end. We continue to see: the outcome of choices which don’t add up, indeterminate luck dished out, the greedy advance their position and svelte thieves flock together in twisted harmony. We observe patterns but often do not possess enough power to significantly alter them; this could be the essence of our plight.
If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day. An ambitious woman in the corporate world can be viewed as a threat if she is too successful; she may be considered callous if she cares too much about her career. A woman in the art world is viewed in another context, but to an extent, one sphere (indeed) overlaps the other. Will the women in this exhibition be viewed as threats, and if not, what does that entail? Would you take a woman artist more seriously if she appeared to be dangerous? Would you hide from her—or hide from her work? Curiously enough, when you find yourself at that forked path, she might be your only oracle. In this world, we are not only presented with oversimplified ‘zero-sum’ games—where one person’s gain is someone else’s loss. Instead, even if temporarily, we may become entangled in some ‘no-win’ variant. Contradiction and ambivalence can either resolve or enforce conflict—at any rate, these traits are in bloom.
—Jacquelyn Davis
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22.03—26.03.2017
Group exhibition during Stockholm Art Week (22/3-26/3) at Biologiska museet. Free entrance
Catrin Andersson Hans Andersson Willem Andersson Dick Bengtsson Miriam Bäckström Nadine Byrne Timothy Crisp Christo Lars Englund Julius Göthlin Dick Hedlund Jone Kvie Beth Laurin Bruno Liljefors Camilla Løw Andreas Mangione Julia Peirone Hilde Retzlaff Linnéa Sjöberg Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen
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I will be part of NKD residency during January – February 2017
Måste man vara hel, ren och arbetsför? Författaren Tone Schunnesson, filmregissören Ken Loach och konstnären Linnéa Sjöberg gör på olika sätt motstånd mot trenden som säger att människovärde är synonymt med framgång och arbetsduglighet. Och så träffar vi Carl Cederström, som skrivit boken Wellnessyndromet, och menar att “de lyckade” är de som tär mest på samhället. Programledare: Kristofer Lundström och Lina Thomsgård.
Albin Looström Arvid Wretman Beck & Jung Julia Peirone Johanna Gustafsson Fürst Juan Pedro Fabra Timothy Crisp Linnéa Sjöberg Hilde Retzlaff Viktor Fordell Przemek Pyszczek Sophie Tottie
Systems for transportation make up the backbone of how cities and societies are constructed or imagined.
Belenius Gallery proudly presents the summer group exhibition grade //// separation. Roads, railroads, tunnels and other paths are separated into grades to prevent traffic and to minimize the risk of accidents, but they equally become grids of movement through the traffic that runs on them. It also becomes a symbolic movement for development and interconnectedness.
In grade //// separation we are met by artistic practices that deal with different systems and movements in a broader sense. The artworks in the show create a cohesive grid system even though all of them come from different directions thematically and aesthetically. The entity of the works can be seen as a system (i.e. an exhibition), but it is also a structure of controlled movement within the space. Together they become like a grid where each individual string is part of a whole and the flow is established through their separateness.
Alida Ivanov July, 2016
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Group Exhibtion “Industrisemester” curated by Johan Norling, Grängesberg, opening 18th of June
This sentence precedes a quote that – without this sentence – would have been the first words of the essay you are reading. They would have tinted the text and guided you, dear reader:
There is a hierarchy in the arts: decorative art at the bottom, and the human form at the top. Because we are men. – Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant, 1918
Not so long ago, this quote by two proto Modernists may have constituted the beginning of a text. Even more than that, it may have been followed by Sigmund Freud’s assertion that the “unique” contribution of women to civilization is weaving, a decorative art per se. In his lecture on “Femininity” from 1933, the late psychoanalyst propagated that in weaving, women imitate how nature conceals their “genital lack” with pubic hair.
This essay is on Linnéa Sjöberg’s latest body of work, in which weaving plays a pivotal role. A year and a half ago, Sjöberg bought a loom and ransacked her parent’s house for old pieces of clothing. She took what she could find as long as it was black, from her favorite disco dress during her teenage years, to an old umbrella, to her grandmother’s last skirt. Back at her loom, Sjöberg wove the materials into a 15metre long quilt with only 30 cm of the fabric visible at a time, due to the way the apparatus is built. The work titled Four Generations of Darkness became an elongated, cadavre exquis a metaphor for separate yet interwoven generations and biographies.
As art historian Lucy Lippard pointed out in 1976 with regard to Eva Hesse’s work, “tying, sewing, knotting, wrapping, binding, knitting,” have long been regarded as “female” activities and hence less valued than other “male” work. Textile art was perhaps most associated with the keepers of the domestic home, a dubious privilege only, if at all, applicable to whitemiddle and upperclass women. However, textiles have since also become a symbol for subverting this notion. In the banners of the Suffragette resistance, the “primitive” and “natural” connotations projected onto textiles by the West were overthrown and artists like Eva Hesse transcended the entrenched amalgam between fabrics and “women’s work” through repetition and ritual.
Working away to the monotonous, woodenclunking sound of the apparatus, weaving is a physically exhausting labour. The compulsive use of the body in everrepeated movements, Lippard goes on, can also “be a guard against vulnerability; a bulletproof vest of closely knit activity [that] can be woven against fate”. Sjöberg does not create comfy softonthe skin garments, but kneads together personal materials loaded with history, some of which border on the abject. Her quilts Layers of Shit, for instance, consist of yellowish rubber stripes cut and torn from an old mattress in the artist’s studio. God knows what happened on the bed before, and where the stains stem from.
Another series of work is made from embossed parchment, cow skins. Sjöberg’s engraved tattoos from her own body onto shinethrough and black leathers. While some of the works are made by the artist herself, others are produced by a company that serves luxury brands like LVMH. Sjöberg conflates high and low in the same way she interweaves art and life. After her allin performances of first being a business woman and then a tattoo artist for several years, she is now a weaver. In weaving, the inside and outside are blurred. As critical studies researcher Sarat Maharaj wrote in 1991, textile art cites “established genres and their edges as it cuts across and beyond them” to throw out of joint “handeddown notions of art practice / genre /gender”.
Sjöberg’s weavings – just like her parchment works – mess up the borders between the inside and outside, high and low, art and life, male and female. Her incisions penetrate the skin and her fierce engravings leave burnt scars on and in the body. Her threads are entangled inseparably in epic tapestries, similar to her total interweaving of art and life. Weaving, as Donna Haraway once put it, is for “oppositional cyborgs”.
Contributed in Loyal New Sensations Vol. 2. Release party 27th of November at Loyal Gallery, Kammakargatan 68, Stockholm, 6-9 pm
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Presentation av konstnärskap på Konsthögskolan Umeå Universitet Datum: 11/11 Tid: Kl 10
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Galleri Verkligheten visar mellan 23 oktober och 14 november en parutställning med stockholmsbaserade konstnärerna Chris Magnusson och Linnéa Sjöberg. Två stycken högst individuella uttryck med gemensamma anknytningspunkter. Deras riktning mot det instinktiva arbetet och metodiska sätt att konstruera sina praktiker för dem samman.
Magnusson svårplacerade teckningar och humoristiska kopplingar kommer ur ett arbete som ger vika för infallet och håller honom i samma position av utforskare som oss betraktare när vi möter hans bildvärld. Chris Magnusson tycks ofta söka sig bort från det konceptuella arbetet, kanske för att ge mer utrymme åt det som han själv inte kan planera. Exempelvis genom att fokusera på triviala ämnen eller arbetstekniker där han själv blir novis.
Sjöbergs metod mynnar ut i årslånga performativa projekt där livsstil och vardag omformas och kontinuerligt skräddarsys vilket i sin tur resulterar i ett naivistiskt, men samtidigt strikt planerat, arbete. En mindre detalj i en både iscensatt och verklig vardag kan resultera i ett konstnärligt verk. Som i hennes tidigare projekt Salong Flyttkartong där hennes tatueringar utförda under projektets tid (på sig själv och andra) kom att bli stoff för T-shirts, bryggda öl och en bok.
Deras fokus på metod framför koncept gör processen synlig i deras verk och befinner sig på en metadiskussion om konstnärligt arbete. Trots det skapar de något som blir både spontant, levande och fysiskt när de olika metoderna sätts att arbeta.
För deras gemensam utställning på Galleri Verkligheten visar de arbeten från den senaste tiden, arbeten som lutar åt det svarta, i både tematik och färg.
Med vävstolen som ett performativt verktyg återaktivera Sjöberg en dåtid. Insamlat material från hennes barndomshem, gamla kläder och vhs-band som klipps till trasor, nystas till hårda bollar för att sedan vävas ihop till ett stycke. Med en svart betsad vävstol kommer Sjöberg jobba på plats i galleriet under hela utställningsperioden.
Chris Magnusson har till denna utställning fokuserat på figurer som utövar pilates-liknande övningar och abstrakta former hämtade från gymmets maskiner. Magnusson försätter sina figurer i ansträngda poser med svarta medicinbollar under närmast tortyrlika former. Ett svart skämt utan avsändare som mellan raderna ger både en glädjefylld och osäker känsla.
Tack till Lilla Galleriet i Umeå, Karin “Fina” Jönsson på Stockholms Läns Hemslöjdsförening samt Katarina Wretén från 18 vävare.
14 apr 2019
