Art

I have longed to move away, but it’s spring, Matthias Garcia at Gerdman Gallery Text by Natalia Muntean Matthias Garcia lives near Versailles and spends a lot of time in its gardens, the excess of flowers and nature’s abundance finding its way into everything he creates. His studio is in his apartment, and he doesn’t keep fixed hours when it comes to his work. Painting, for him, equates with free-flow writing, following stories as they come to his imagination. “I start by creating the background, and while I am doing it, another story is coming,” he says about his process. The son of a philosophy teacher and a painter, Garcia found his art around seventeen, after years of resistance. He trained at Les Beaux-Arts de Paris and spent a year on exchange in Kyoto, an experience that left a visible mark on his work. The figures in his paintings, often modelled on himself or on his friend, the Réunion-born model Raya Martigny, “painted with a very thin black line, almost tracing back the movement,” are linked directly to Japanese drawing. The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen became his literary compass early on, carried alongside manga and painters like Unica Zürn, Odilon Redon and Hieronymus Bosch, a variety of references that coexist in his canvases.  The paintings in his first Stockholm show, on display at Gerdman Gallery until April 30th, are dense with flowers and detail. Dreamlike and lascivious in the way fairy tales can be, they pull you in to try to decipher their secrets. A nymph drifts underwater, another peels away a mask; in some works, an intense, almost electric blue dominates, the boundaries between reality and fantasy blurring completely. Portrait by Vincent Thibault Andersen’s Little Mermaid runs like a red thread through the work, “she wanted to have a soul, she wanted to become human,” Garcia mentions,  alongside The Princess and the Pea, and a self-portrait of sorts: Garcia standing between worlds, protecting what is within. “If you want to have a big imaginary world inside, you have to accept the real world, because if you are in a fight, one of them will destroy the other.” The title, borrowed from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and completed by Garcia, is defined by the same duality. Spring arrives regardless. “You want to die,” he said, “and then, oh, it’s spring. I don’t want to die anymore.”

Stockholm Art Week Returns 21–26 April Stockholm Art Week returns for its 2026 edition from 21 to 26 April, with an opening event at Moderna Museet on 20 April. The week draws together the full breadth of Stockholm’s art scene, from major institutions and commercial galleries to artist-run initiatives and temporary public interventions, under a single programme designed to position the city as an international destination for contemporary art. Two of the Nordic region’s most significant art fairs mark milestone anniversaries this year: Market Art Fair and Supermarket Art Fair, both celebrate their 20th editions. Market moves to a new venue, Magasin 9 in Frihamnen, while Supermarket takes place in Slakthusområdet. IASPIS also marks its 30th anniversary during the week. Among the institutional highlights, Moderna Museet opens Anna Casparsson – The Isle of Bliss, and Fotografiska presents I Am Everything, a new exhibition by Lotta Antonsson. In public space, Italian artist Davide Rivalta inaugurates a new sculpture at Mynttorget in central Stockholm, and Statens konstråd presents Träet talar. Kummelholmen opens to visitors for a single day. The programme includes artist talks at venues across the city, among them Petra Lindholm at Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Sara-Vide Ericson at the Royal Institute of Art, Filippa Arrias at Färgfabriken, and Diana Orving at Millesgården. A private viewing of Mark Dion’s installation The Classroom is held at the Stockholm School of Economics. On Saturday, an open Gallery Breakfast Tour takes in galleries in Östermalm and around Hudiksvallsgatan. Younger and emerging voices are well represented: 25 Konstfack students present work in the group exhibition Schvung, and Parallel Collective hosts an opening night. Private home exhibitions are presented by Misschief in Vasastan and Eva Livijn in Östermalm. Special projects include a collaboration between Porsche and sculptor Anders Krisár, presenting a purpose-made Art Car, and A Day’s March launches a tote bag and Stockholm Art Week’s official overshirt, developed with artist Rugiyatou Ylva Jallow in collaboration with Mack Art Foundation. “Stockholm Art Week is an opportunity to experience the entire city’s art scene within one week, from museums and established galleries to artist-run initiatives and temporary projects in the urban space,” says Joanna Sundström, Founder, Stockholm Art Week. The full programme is updated continuously at stockholmartweek.com.

Klara Wirsén Suchowiak Feels Owned text by Natalia Muntean “The things you own end up owning you,” says Klara Wirsén Suchowiak about ÄGD, her solo exhibition at WAY Gallery in Stockholm. Wirsén Suchowiak is known for her tactile, sculptural explorations of the body as both site and narrative. Trained at Beckmans College of Design, Gerlesborg School of Fine Art and Nyckelviksskolan, has previously shown at venues such as Liljevalchs Spring Salon and Värmlands Museum. Opening on March 5th, the exhibition looks at experiences of parenthood, desire and vulnerability and turns them into unsettling, seductive and humorous encounters that invite both emotional and physical engagement. Natalia Muntean: The title ÄGD (OWNED) is very powerful and direct. Can you talk about the decision to use this word?Klara Wirsén Suchowiak: I am owned. Owned by life, owned by the artistic process, owned by my paycheck, owned by the social structures, owned by capitalism, owned by the gender roles, owned by my family life, owned by my children.  NM: The exhibition highlights the “contradictory experiences of parenthood”, desire, care, vulnerability and excess. How do you balance these opposing forces in a single work or installation? Was there a specific piece where this paradox was most challenging to capture?KWS: In my latest work, “My sister’s milk,” I have been working with real breast milk that I’ve collected from different people. The milk sprays out from sculpted breasts and a baby’s mouth, in a large fountain placed on a dining table.Breastfeeding is like dynamite; it’s a subject everyone has strong feelings and opinions about, even if they might not dare to admit it. The body is political, especially bodies that do things like lactation. In this work, I have explored and wrestled with the many different emotions and positions that come with breastfeeding itself. On the walls around the fountain, tongues are sticking out. They are artworks that stand on their own, but they can also be interpreted as observers. In the piece, I have a combination of materials that present a discrepancy. The milk is beautiful, white, and frothy. The breasts and the baby’s mouth are cast in a smooth stone composite, and the fountain itself is made of fibreglass and epoxy. The colour and texture of the fibreglass make me think of some kind of toxic boat construction, something you don’t want close to your skin, something you don’t want to touch. Yet the baby and the breasts lie there in the middle, gurgling and spraying. On March 5th, at 16:00, everyone who is breastfeeding is welcome to help me inaugurate the fountain by spraying their milk into it. We’ll see if anyone later dares to drink from it. NM: You work with a wide range of materials, from stone to textile to found objects. Could you give an example of how a specific material was essential to express an emotion in ÄGD? KWS: For a long time, I’ve had a vision of creating an artwork where the feeling should be like the sensation you get when a hair is caught in your throat. You pull out something fuzzy, invasive, from your glossy, gagging mouth. That feeling inspired me to create the works called “:P,” which are several tongues of different materials and sizes sticking out from the walls. Some of the tongues are smooth and glossy, others are filled with lots of small objects – babies, metal pieces, etc. And some of the tongues are covered with textile fibers so they are hairy and soft like velvet. The tongues hang next to each other like trophies, or perhaps like spectators in the room. So in this installation, the encounter between different materials was important. I wanted to create a clash between shapes and materials that gives me a physical reaction. NM: You mention the viewer as a “recipient.” What is it that you hope viewers will receive from this installation?KWS: I hope that those who encounter my works feel something. What that feeling is, I don’t want to control. NM: You mention using found objects in your practice. Are there any incorporated into ÄGD? If so, what was the story or previous life of that object, and how does its history resonate with the themes of the exhibition?KWS: The sculpture “Domestic” is like a large body, but also a house at the same time. The house is furnished with countless dollhouse furniture, toys, and small things I’ve collected throughout my life. Together, these objects create a house where the parents have lost control, it’s incredibly messy, and no child is sleeping; all the kitchens are on fire. The house and the body have become one, and it is very heavy to carry. The objects in the house come from many different places: from my own old toys, flea markets, my parents’ home, travels, dumpsters and some I’ve been given because people know I collect things. The searching and collecting is something I see as part of the process. And as we know, the things you own end up owning you, and I will probably end up as a hoarder like the ones you see on TV. NM: You’ve created several public artworks with your mother, Stina Wirsén. How does that intergenerational collaboration influence your approach to themes of parenthood and the body? KWS: I have been creating for as long as I can remember, next to my siblings and parents. That’s how we spend time together and how we communicate best, by making. Other families might play soccer or sing or cook; we have always sat next to each other with pen and paper. So, making art with my mother wasn’t really something new; the only new things were the scale, the materials, and the fact that the works would be received by others. Our artworks deal with themes like family, body, care, and vulnerability, but in a public space. How can we make forms radiate those qualities? That’s what we are working on. We made our first sculptures a few months after I

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.