Author name: Natalia Muntean

Martin Wickström on Painting, Space and OSLO text Natalia Muntean Martin Wickström describes his way of working as one where you “start somewhere, and it kind of develops during.” Presented at CFHILL Gallery in Stockholm, OSLO brings together painting, literature and photographic material in an exhibition informed by Henrik Ibsen, Edvard Munch, as well as the artist’s long-standing interest in found objects. Active since the late 1970s, the Swedish painter reflects on his process, where images are sometimes held for decades before finding their place. In OSLO, references are absorbed rather than illustrated, and meaning emerges through trust in the room, the material and the passage of time. Muntean Natalia: Why Oslo? What drew you to this title, and what kind of space does it open for the work?Martin Wickström: It’s normally when I do a show, I have a room space, obviously, and a deadline. But when I start working, I don’t know anything about the title or anything. I start somewhere, and it kind of develops during, so it’s kind of scary. Will it end well? I don’t know. But in this case, the theme is easier to read than it used to be. When I started, I had this painting with a big truck house. I collect a lot of pictures and images from several sources. The sofa – that one I also had for many years, kind of lying around. But this time, I started without knowing anything about Oslo, with a sofa. The next step was my wife, Lena – that’s important. She had talked about a play she made for television in 1993, Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. I decided to see that, and meanwhile, I started thinking about theatre plays and texts. And all of a sudden, I knew that this truck was a “Dukkehjem” (A Doll’s House), the very famous play, also by Ibsen. And then we managed to get Hedda Gabler from the archives on SVT to see it. I was totally astonished.  I also found a photo book by Edvard Munch. He worked a lot with photography, not in a documentary way, but experimental, introspective. One of the paintings here is based on one of his photographs. It shows Rosa, one of his models with red hair, and her sister Olga. At first, I thought it was Munch himself in the photo, but then I read about it and realised it was the two sisters. And then I knew that this was it. It was going to be Norway in one way or another. That’s how OSLO came to be.NM: You mentioned strong women like Hedda Gabler and Nora from A Doll’s House. Were you also thinking of the current political situation?MW: No, it wasn’t that, but it’s even more important to reflect on it. These plays were written in the 1860s-80s and were extremely progressive stories about strong women. Nora, in the end, decides to just leave her husband and kids to start a new life; in its time, that was extremely radical and provocative. Then there is Hedda Gabler, a strong daughter of a military colonel. She inherited duel pistols from her father, and she is almost exploding in her marriage. In the end, she kills herself. These were written 150 years ago, and all of a sudden, women’s history is going down again fast. It’s frightening, and it makes it even more important to take these strong women out. NM: What can you tell me about the use of the colour red in this exhibition?MW: I’ve used it sometimes, but not like this. I started with this small painting of a woman with a telephone, which is cut out from a film still of Jane Fonda. That image was red from the beginning. When I finished that painting, which was the first one I did, I thought, “Wow, I really like the red,” and it also corresponded with the strong theme in the exhibition. Initially, the photos are in black and white, so I turned them into red. Image Courtesy Martin Wickström & CFHILL NM: It sounds like you have some intentions when you start working, but there’s also a lot of play involved. Could you walk me through your creative process a little bit, and what a typical day might look like?MW: I mean, I obviously have a lot of things collected, but I don’t really know how they fit together at first. People ask me, “How do you dare to work like that?” I’ve done it now maybe 60 times over 50 years. You start with what’s important: the space. So I start with the space. I work on the computer: I virtually ‘take down’ the walls of every space I work with and then build it up again. I turn images red, change them, cut them, whatever is needed, and then I place them as miniatures, in the right scale, on the virtual walls to test how they might work together. Of course, as you understand, I don’t have all the works ready at that point, but I can still start by saying, “Okay, I need this, and that, and that. Maybe that’s a bit too much,” and so on. I can begin to see what I need and how it might fit. For example, I knew about the truck house painting, and that was the first one. Then I thought, if I put that one there, and the sofa painting over here, which has nothing to do with Oslo, but I named it after George Harrison’s ‘Norwegian Wood’, the Beatles classic, then it starts to connect. Even if the final exhibition doesn’t end up exactly like the computer model, I’ve learned how to read the room. That’s my process. And when it comes to separate paintings, I also work with them digitally: I change the colours, cut things away, and then make a big photocopy. I look at the photo I made on the computer and work from that. NM: How much do

In Conversation with Diana Orving: Celestial Bodies at Millesgården Museum text Natalia Muntean What happens when the sculptures of Carl Milles encounter the fluid, porous textiles of Diana Orving? To launch the &Milles exhibition series at Millesgården Museum in Stockholm, the inaugural presentation features Stockholm-based artist Diana Orving, whose exhibition Celestial Bodies introduces textile sculptures into the world of Milles’s mythology and astronomy. Working with silk, linen and repetitive stitching, Orving creates “organic beings” that seem to defy gravity. In this exhibition, she reflects on the spirit of the site, the vulnerability of her materials and her belief that the human body is our first universe. Natalia Muntean: The &Milles series is framed as a dialogue across time. In your site-specific response, were you in conversation more with Carl Milles’s artworks, his themes of mythology and astronomy, or the spirit of the place he and Olga created?Diana Orving: For me, the strongest dialogue was with the spirit of the place itself – the atmosphere Carl and Olga Milles shaped through a life lived alongside art, nature, belief, and curiosity. Rather than responding directly to individual sculptures, I was drawn to what exists between them: the air, the height, the light, and the sense of upward longing embedded in the former studio. Early on, I understood that my work needed to inhabit the upper zones, ceilings, thresholds, and in-between spaces, responding to the building’s own vertical rhythm. Knowing that Milles observed the stars from a small tower room made something click. It felt like entering a place already oriented toward the sky. The works grew out of that shared sense of wonder, rather than from a desire to echo Milles’s formal language.  photography Märta Thisner NM: Why did you choose the title Celestial Bodies for this exhibition?DO: The title carries a dual meaning that felt central to the exhibition. Celestial bodies refers both to planets and stars, and to bodies as vessels – human, animal or imagined. Throughout the exhibition, bodies appear in states of becoming: drifting, hovering, suspended, or transforming. Everything alive is in motion, slow but persistent, and I try to capture that sense of movement in my sculptures, as if they are not truly still, only momentarily paused. The title holds a tension between intimacy and immensity – between being grounded in the body and reaching toward something unknowable.  NM: There’s a contrast between your soft forms and Milles’ solid bronze and stone. Is this a conversation about contrasting worldviews, or did you find an unexpected softness in his work, or a hidden strength in yours?DO: I experience it less as a contrast and more as a dialogue between different kinds of permanence. Milles’s materials speak of endurance, gravity, and monumentality, while my textiles speak of breath, vulnerability and change, yet they carry their own strength. There is a quiet tenderness in Milles’ figures, particularly in their upward reach or moments of suspended movement. In my work, strength lies in time: in the accumulated labour of stitching, folding and installing. The dialogue unfolds somewhere between weight and weightlessness. NM: You explore origin, memory and the subconscious. When creating for this specific site, did you feel you were weaving your own memories, responding to the memories held in the Milles home or tapping into a more collective or mythological memory?DO: It was a layering of all three. My hands carry embodied memory – gestures and repetitions built up over decades of working with textiles. At Millesgården, I was also surrounded by another life’s devotion to making, belief, and imagination. Beyond that, the site holds something archetypal. For me, mythology functions as a form of collective memory, a way of holding experiences that resist rational explanation. The works move within that shared subconscious space, where personal experience meets something older and more universal. photography Erik Lefvander NM: You work a lot with themes of the body and memory. How do those ideas connect to the cosmic themes in this show?DO: I think of the body as our first universe. It’s where we first encounter gravity, rhythm, expansion and balance. When I work with cosmic themes, I’m not thinking of space as distant, but as something reflected within us. Memory functions like a constellation – fragmented, non-linear and constantly shifting. The sculptures carry that sense of internal movement, suggesting that both bodies and memories are always in motion. NM: What is your favourite material to work with and why?DO: Textile, without question. It carries time in a very direct way. Every stitch records a decision, a hesitation, a breath. I try to give the material a body, a presence and an internal movement, as if guiding it to speak in its own language. Its lightness allows me to work at a monumental scale without losing intimacy. Textiles can hold vulnerability and strength at once, which feels essential to my practice. NM: As the first artist in the &Milles series, you are setting a tone. What do you believe is the role of a contemporary artist when entering into dialogue with a historic legacy and collection like this one?DO: I believe the role is to listen before responding, not to illustrate the past or position oneself against it, but to allow a conversation to unfold. A historic collection isn’t static; it continues to breathe through new encounters. Contemporary artists can activate these spaces by introducing uncertainty, tenderness, and alternative ways of knowing, adding a new layer rather than overwriting what already exists. photography Erik Lefvander NM: What do you hope people feel or think about when they walk between your textiles and Carl Milles’s bronze sculptures?DO: I hope the exhibition opens a quiet, generous space for reflection – on fragility and endurance, longing and belief, and on life as something constantly unfolding.