Author name: odalisque

Affordable Art Fair 2023 text Natalia Muntean Stockholm Affordable Art Fair 2023: A preview of what’s to come“I see them in my dreams. I dream a lot,” says Fredrik Sologub, known as Dive, about his paintings and creative process. He stumbled into painting eight years ago after a party and hasn’t stopped since. “Nowadays, my art is much less curated and more raw and authentic,” he says about his evolution.Dive is one of the artists whose work will be featured at the upcoming Affordable Art Fair in Stockholm, with his painting adorning the event’s poster. The Stockholm fair, now in its 11th edition, will run from October 4th to 8th, 2023, at Nacka Strandsmässan. It will showcase thousands of contemporary artworks from over 60 hand-picked local and international galleries. This year’s fair, called Follow your art, emphasizes love and humanity – something needed in these times and something that art can help express. Among the artists showcasing their art this year are Mimmi Hammar, contemporary artist, Yoyo Nasty, artist and illustrator, and Erik Batsberg, multidisciplinary artist working in interior design, sculpture, and painting. In addition, Sigrfrid Billgren, designer, artist and the son of Swedish artist and writer Ernst Billgren, will also display his art at the fair. The first Affordable Art Fair took place in Battersea Park in 1999. It has now spread to ten cities around the world, welcoming over 185,000 art lovers each year to explore affordable artwork crafted by emerging and established artists. Poster: DIVE, ‘Cottoncandy Volcano’

Chen Man text Sandra Myhrberg @CHEN MAN, 12 Chinese colors Vermilion, 2011 Being born in post-revolutionary Beijing with the one-child policy in effect, the world’s famous female artist and photographer, Chen Man has created her own spiritual revolution by changing China’s face for the western world. Being compared with Annie Leibovitz and dubbed the “Mario Testino of China”, the artist has renegotiated the cultural and philosophical ideals of her home country established in the Western society boldly through her images giving the China’s beauty aesthetic its own postmodern identity and putting the latter on the world’s fashion scene. Seemingly, “Fearless & Fabulous” – the artist’s first solo exhibition taking place outside China – is a luminous proof of that. The exhibition opened on December 9th at Museum of Photography in Stockholm and has undoubtedly conquered the fastidious cultural world of the Scandinavian capital. The artist’s works create a self-speaking dualistic illustration of a new aspirational China, where East meets West in a reality balancing between the outer beauty and the inner wisdom. Furthermore, Chen, as China’s top fashion photographer and artist, has a myriad of photo shoots on her CV, starting with Dior campaigns and ending by her self-portrait for Qeelin’s Chen Man by Chen Man campaign. Her lens has virtuously captured China’s national icon, actress Fan Bingbing and strikingly eternalised such celebrities as Rihanna, Nicole Kidman, Keanu Reeves and Victoria Beckham. Chen’s photographs have been acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum for their permanent collection. Entirely, the images of Chen Man are easily recognisable as they embrace both modern post-production techniques and Eastern themes, creating an own unique fearless and fabulous philosophical fusion of pure romance, rough spirit, naked ambitions and exquisite humour.   @CHEN MAN, Long Live the Motherland, Beijing No. 1, 2010 @CHEN MAN, Long live the Motherland, Beijing 5, 2009 I have understood you started with art at an early age. At what age did you steer over to photography?When I was in college my major was in photography. I read that you were born during the time when China was implementing the one-child policy in families, do you think that had an affect on your artistic exploration?Off course, I was a single child. Our generation started to study really early. The thing is that I am really good at painting. My parents gave me professional training at painting. Classes to train different techniques since I was two years old. Actually my major profession is a painter and I still paint. I am a better painter than a photographer. Your work almost looks like paintings after post production, did you ever work with analog photography or have you always worked with the digital medium?I started with a series of images for an art magazine called Vision Magazine when I was in college, I made one photo per month. I have a lot of passion for the visual language, therefore I have used a lot of Photoshop and really heavy post-production since then. That is where people think I am from. My name is Chen Man, so a lot of people [outside China] think that I am a man. At that time no one used Photoshop in China, when those works reached the market. Artist and photographers were quite shocked about this series. Thus, they didn’t know wether to define me as an artist or a photographer. Did you teach yourself photoshop or did you study?I am also a graphic designer so I kind of already new photoshop. You also have a clothing label, how come you started to do clothing design?I am not a professional clothing designer but I was approached by different brands to put together a crossover collection since I am kind of a celebrity in China. I have a bunch of followers on Instagram, over 10 million in China. A lot of them are young girls and that is a huge market so the brand has chosen me as a special artist to create different kinds of products. This is my fifth year creating a collection. I like cosmetics and I also have a collab with Mac Cosmetics. The brand chose me as a first Chinese artist for their collection of limited edition of crossover products called Love & Water. @CHEN MAN, 12 Chinese colors White, 2011 @CHEN MAN, Long live the Motherland, Beijing 5, 2009 What’s your favourite camera you like to use?I am not a fan of the machine so I use what I have, for example Hasselblad and Canon. I have Canon investors in China. You were first published with a self portrait in a Chine’s art magazine that caught a lot of attention, and shortly after you were published in many international publications, do you think the rise of the internet at the time helped you gain recognition outside China as a young artist?Yes, could be. I was reported by different kinds of medias in the beginning such New York Times, CNN and ID. How is it to work as a female photographer in China? Have you felt any limitations?I don’t feel any limitations. I am quite casual, not really tuff as a business woman. I am concentrating on the visual language and how to enjoy it. I think it is a convenience that I am a woman. I shoot a lot of female actresses and therefore I can shoot them totally nude without any boundary. Are the editors at the magazines you work with in China mostly men or women?Most of the editors I  work with are mostly female or gay…. Do you find that you work in a different way when you work with international clients?No, it depends on the country and on different people. Some really understand their brand and know what they need and they trust their choice and let me do what I want. Other brands don’t know who they are yet and are trying to figure out what they want to do. So, could you say that you do branding in a way?Yes. @CHEN MAN, Long live the Motherland, Shanghai, 2010 @CHEN MAN, Long

Viviane Sassen text Blenda Setterwa While waiting for Viviane Sassen in the exhibition room at the Fotografiska Museet (Museum of Photography), in Stockholm, I have time for a private moment with the almost finished UMBRA exhibition. As much as I’ve read up on Viviane Sassen’s photography, something comes together in the dimly lit room, like a wordless message is being whispered from the walls. They trigger a sense of fusion and synecdoche in me, where all my senses become equally receptive. The sort of images that linger when you close your eyes and speak to a place in your mind where they might be mistaken for personal memories in the future.UMBRA is full of contrasts and contradictions. A galanty show, color-popping sunlight, smoke, mirrors and frozen intimacy, capturing the space between the internal and external in us. Shadows of all shapes and sizes follow us like ghosts through the images. Pitch black and magnetic, sharply cut and graphic or thinly-spread like smoke and veils, all with a sense of gravity, mysticism and presence seen through Sassen’s camera lens.As we sit down for the interview, Viviane Sassen – like her body of work – signals an alliance between contradicting forces. Genuine openness and curiosity paired with strong integrity and a piercing gaze. V: I sometimes refer to myself back when I was younger as a shy exhibitionist. I think that in a lot of my work, there are paradoxes. Darkness and light, bold and subtle… there are all these contrasts. I feel drawn to both sides at the same time. Referring to myself as a shy exhibitionist sums it up. You want to show, you want to shine but at the same time you’re too shy to truly show your self. And I often feel drawn towards images that don’t show faces because I feel like they leave much more to the imagination. I like an image to not be… conclusive. To have an open end. B: Something that lingers… V: Yes. It makes you think about how you should perceive the image and what the story behind it is. In our subconscious we all have these universal ideas of what things are, how to register and categorize them, to be able to understand the outside world. And how that reflects back on our self. That’s constant, measuring between the self and the other. B: What is your fascination with shadows? V: I think the shadow stands for the unknown and I want to peek into the unknown. But it’s not about finding answers, it’s the curiosity itself. Maybe it is the fascination with the unknown. With darkness and with death, ultimately. And a fear of death that I have always had. My father was a doctor and worked in Africa. Later when we moved back to Holland, he had his practice in our house. There was always sickness and death nearby, it had something mysterious about it for me. And later on my father passed away, he ended his own life which was very tragic and something I can’t really understand. I think I still wonder what it’s like on the other side. B: And the shadow is a portal? V: A portal, yes. Without any answers. B: Can you tell me how you made these glass photographies in the desert? They look Photoshopped, but they’re not? V: No their not. It’s actually pieces of coloured prospects and a mirror. At least in the smaller once I used a mirror. And it was by accident that this happened because I set myself a goal to make a photographic version of the black square of Malevich. I had these really square things in mind and using the landscape. Almost like Rothko you know? All those references are there, but then I also brought a mirror, but I didn’t know what to do with it. At one point we were just resting a bit, drinking some water because we were in the desert in Namibia. When we put the mirror in the sand to free our hands, I saw the reflection of the sky. That was really beautiful! So we started experimenting with making shadows on top of the mirror. That is basically what you see. For instance that arrow here in the very corner, just a very thin line in the middle. That’s the mirror itself, seen from above. That dark piece on the right is the shadow of the mirror and the light piece is the reflexion of the sun in the mirror. They became very graphic, but I Like the human element in them, that you still see the shadows of the hand. B: How and when did you know you wanted to express yourself through photography? V: I think it was clear to me from a very young age that I wanted to do something creative, because I just couldn’t stop dreaming and drawing. That’s basically all I did. After high school it was pretty obvious that I would go to art school, but at the time I didn’t really know what I wanted to do or become. Or study. I thought maybe graphic design, maybe fashion design. I think the idea of becoming an artist was one step too far for me at the time, It was to vague and I needed something with more structure. So I decided to study fashion design, witch I did for two years. But I quite quickly realized that making clothes was not my passion, I wasn’t really interested in clothes that much. I’ve always had this kind of love/hate relationship with fashion. Like, not really interested but at the same time fashion photography always gave me a great platform to express myself, communicate and experiment with photography. B: You started out as a model, that was your first encounter with the fashion industry. Do you think that affects your artistic expression in any way, that you have a double view? V: Yeah, I think it had an influence on me back then. Just the fact that I worked with other creative people