As artificial intelligence sits poised to ‘compete’ with us for the spaces in societies we have inhabited in a solar system ever so vulnerable to almost uncontrollable cosmic interference, the fragility of our very psychological and physical existence bears sharply on our daily living – be it mundane routines as dancers go about their rehearsals to their live performances, or transformative journeys we take in this globalized world.
In times like these we seek art that sublimely calms us, music that reinvigorates us into the spaces we occupy; weaving into the very fabric of our innermost beings our form’s essential values – of the wealth of creative capabilities resonating in infinite spiritual-dimensionality.
Exhibition: The remaining glimpses
Artist: Hrönn Gunnarsdóttir
Where: CANDYLAND, Gotlandsgatan 76
When: 18 August to 3 September
The remaining glimpses of Icelandic artist Hrönn Gunnarsdóttir’s photography and video are a poetic study of fleeting moments that came to her stay in the Nordic Art Association’s guest studio in Malongen, Stockholm; highlighting the times she has been seduced by memories where various elements interface with nature, along with exposing her internal sense, by magnifying issues where everyday routines expose discomfort and vulnerability.
Exhibition & Artist: DANKA JAWORSKA
Where: Galleri Eklund, Karlavagen 15
When: 24 August to 23 September
An internationally active artist with exhibitions in Sweden, Poland, France, Germany, England, Italy, the US and Denmark, Danka Jaworska creates paintings as collages and as what this medium traditionally intends; mixing healthy figurative with the purely abstract to sublimely convey a sense of calm that we so desperately need in the uncertainty of these ever changing times.
Exhibition: 8 minutes 20 seconds
Artist: Ebba Matz
Where: Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Hälsingegatan 43
When: 24 August to 30 September
With Ebba Matz as sculptor and creator of inner and outer space, themes of micro and macro perspectives present themselves in her installations; making us look at what many of us want to avoid – space and our place in it.
Her sculpture of black glass spheres – symbolizing the planets and the sun – compel us to see the solar system as creators of this ungraspable space. Yet the more we look, the less we see, as the fear of cosmic disasters becomes evident in the broken glass, smashed by the huge meteorite impact that created lake Siljan some 377 million years ago.
An interstellar vertigo seen from different angles that wrings from us a counting of our lucky stars that we are glued to Earth by gravity.
Where: Galerie Forsblom, Karlavägen 9
When: 25 August to 24 September
Exhibition 1: b0t / flOw – ch@rt
Artist: Tony Oursler
Renowned American multimedia and video artist Tony Oursler exhibits robotic glass sculptures with artificial intelligence, miniature flat screens, exposed computer circuitry and a variety of materials. All shown next to two-dimensional screens based on flow charts that combine digitally moving images, painting and sound.
The chimerical bots relate to his ongoing interest in human interaction with technology to question AI-systems’ intelligence: Will robots outlive and conquer us? Or will we be able to live together in a utopia of limitless knowledge?
Exhibition 2: Dissolved
Artist: Adam Saks
Danish artist Adam Saks’s oil paintings and woodcuts of still life and vanitas symbols are combined with elements from contemporary imagery and pop culture: ornamental petals from poppy and hibiscus, knuckle duster and skeleton bones, ceramic objects and debris are all intertwined in a kaleidoscopic universe that reflects the fragility of human existence.
Exhibition: Backdrop
Artist: Björn Abelin
Where: Sven-Harrys konstmuseum, Eastmansvägen 10–12
When: 25 August to 22 October
A photographic journey inside one of the world’s oldest dance companies, the Royal Ballet in Stockholm, accompanied by ballet costumes from the Royal Opera, the exhibition depicts dancers at their everyday rehearsals, premieres and performances, as well as the scenery enjoyed while on tour.
“It was as if my eyes had opened for the first time. Never before had anything so terrifying and amazing been shown. Nothing was familiar or static. The gestures and steps were extended [through] this prolonged time. The descriptions of this first encounter with dance are intense. Without gender or age. In a moment of dance, everyone is young and strong,” said Ditte Feuk, author of the newly released book “Backdrop – stories from within the ballet”.
Exhibition: Extinction Renaissance: 3D printed biome for the nomadic gluten intolerant
Artist: James Ferraro
Where: LOYAL, Kammakargatan 68
When: Till 26 August
Following Los Angeles-based contemporary musician, composer and artist James Ferraro’s residency with Loyal this summer, the exhibition displays his resultant video, sounds and images, along with a new music release, limited to 100 copies.
Ferraro has released a prolific amount of music under his own name and as Bodyguard, Lamborghini Crystal and the two-piece avant-garde project Skaters, with his “Far Side Virtual” as Wired Magazine’s #1 record of the year in 2011, and his “Rockaway!” a long term audio installation at MoMA PS1, New York since 2014.
Exhibition: You Know the Day Destroys the Night
Artists: Mike & Doug Starn
Where: Wetterling Gallery, Kungsträdgården 3
When: 18 August to 2 September
Marking Mike and Doug Starn’s start in their latest series of work that explores a new field of interest while introducing equally new materials and techniques into their practice, the installation-set exhibition displays record albums where we can freely interact with the art to play its music while enjoying its paintings.
Exhibition: VIVA SCULPTURA VIVA!
Artists: Sean Henry, Maria Miesenberger & Jaume Plensa
Where: GALLERI ANDERSSON/SANDSTRÖM, Hudiksvallsgatan 6
When: 24 August to 30 September
A tribute to the sculptural media where the highly personal body of works by all the contributing artists treat human existence as the everyday, the spiritual, the present and the passed, we are thus drawn into the relationship of the body to different forms of psychological and physical space.
Sean Henry depicts anonymous people – the unglamorous, the controlled, the thoughtful and the serious – with sculptures that close inwards; hiding something behind ambiguous expressions often difficult to interpret; making them never quite like us in physical scale and yet imbued with essential truths.
Installed in Enskede Gård’s metro station in Stockholm, Maria Miesenberger’s sculptural “In Moment in Motion, Holding On” holds on to the roof with a lean and strong androgynous body poised ready for whatever might come. With its surface covered with a relief pattern of corneal nerve threads that form a sensible kind of bodily topography, the duality of its appearance is striking; strength and fragility in one, just like human life itself.
Jaume Plensa’s sculptural work has with time, undergone several changes but continues to deal with humanity’s body and soul in its most figurative expressions. Made out of steel, glass, bronze, and alabaster or by light, vibration or sound, his unique ideas and associations are always clearly evident.
Exhibition: Shapeshifters
Artist: Sophie Vuković
Where: Konsthall C, Cigarrvägen 14–16, 123 57 Farsta
When: 1 September to 1 October
When filmmaker Sophie Vuković runs into a long-lost friend at a demonstration, it stirs up memories that take her on a trip that traces her own path of migration from former Yugoslavia via Australia to Sweden today; weaving personal documentary footage with the fiction of memories and dreams, as a poetic exploration of what it means to belong to a globalized world.
A film about friendship, desire and how we build new forms of belonging that are not defined by national borders, Shapeshifters was nominated for the Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary at Gothenburg Film Festival, the Nordic:Dox Award at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen and the Tempo Documentary Award 2017, and will have its cinema opening in Sweden on 20 October.
Exhibition: Curtain
Artist: Britta Kjellgren Jägers
Where: Domeij Gallery AB, Bragevägen 21
When: 24 August to 16 September
Inspired by her mother’s textile crafts where stripes often occurred in weavings, Britta Kjellgren Jäger chooses watercolour on paper to make the textiles’ parallel stripes and their tactile sensual shapes and colours even more apparent; cutting up her large watercolors and systematically stitching the literally roughly mangled stripe after stripe of similar widths and heights of stiff watercolor paper back together into totally new constellations of works.
Exhibition: Structure of the Library
Artist: Martilda Dominique
Where: Konsthantverkarna, Södermalmstorg 4
When: 26 August to 13 September
Exploratory, methodical and permissive Matilda Dominique challenges ideas and conventions around weaving and fabric’s two dimensions by examining and highlighting the weave’s architectural values and its three-dimensionality as she focuses on issues of scaling, materials and spaciousness. The result is a structural Library – a collection of hand-woven sculptural textiles.
Photo and information credits: The respective galleries.
