Art

Klara Kristalova at the Venice Biennale: between desperation and dark comedy Text by Natalia Muntean Twelve metres of tree trunk, covered in hand-dyed Swedish carpets, lying on the floor of Sverre Fehn’s Nordic Pavilion like a giant. On and around it, eleven ceramic figures: a fat mouse, an apple child, a warrior woman breaking free of leaves. For Swedish artist Klara Kristalova, the invitation to represent the Nordic Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale was so unexpected that it stopped her working for months. Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, the body of work is the most ambitious work of Kristalova’s career, hovering somewhere between desperation and dark comedy.  Natalia Muntean: Congratulations on this achievement! Klara Kristalova: Thank you! I was chosen by Finland, the country in charge of the Nordic Pavilion this year, and it was a big surprise. This was the last thing I expected. For me, it’s huge. NM: Why was it the last thing you expected?KK: I’m not the type of artist they would typically invite nowadays. I wouldn’t say I’m old-fashioned, but I work with sculpture, and my work isn’t conceptual in a developed sense. I have ideas around it, but it’s not a built concept. I think that kind of work is what gets invited more these days. So it came as a shock, and I couldn’t work for several months. I was completely stuck, thinking: This is too big for me. NM: How do you feel the three works sit together: yours, Benjamin Orlow’s and Tori Wrånes’s?KK: I think our three works function really well together. In certain details and ways of thinking, they overlap, but at the same time, they are completely different. The Nordic Pavilion looks monumental and sculptural but also very much like a fairy tale. Tori works with mythology and figures, Benjamin as well, but in a totally different way. There’s a loose shared language, but each of us uses it differently. NM: I read that you used to go to the Venice Biennale with your father. How does it feel to now be representing the Nordic countries here?KK: It’s completely surreal. From a very young age, coming here with my father was an enormous thing – to see the art that mattered in the world. I’ve continued coming as an adult, many times. You just work on your work and don’t expect to be included in something like this, because for me, it has always felt almost mythical. For me, it’s very dreamy to be here. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen NM: Was this a dream come true?KK: I never dared to dream it, it was too abstract that I would ever be invited. So it’s not a dream come true exactly. But when I got the call, I thought: Well, I can retire now. Of course I won’t. I don’t think an artist really retires. You just continue, maybe in a different way. If I take even a week off, I feel completely lost. The work is a way of straightening things out, not consciously; I don’t write plans or intentions, but it helps clarify the mind. NM: Do you have any rituals when you work?KK: Not really. I wake up, walk my dogs, and start. I prefer to have several things going at the same time in one day, several sculptures in progress, which also suits the material, because with clay, you can’t work too long before it needs to dry. So I do a little here, a little there, then maybe some drawings or planning for something else. I like the variety. NM: Do your sculptures talk to you while you’re making them?KK: Yes. They change a lot while I’m working. I always start with sketches – a plan, a sense of what I want. When I’m preparing for a specific place, I think about the space and let my mind make associations, then I weave that together with where I am in my life. But once I start building, it shifts, because the work develops its own voice. It’s in the material, but it also changes in my mind as my hands work. I can’t think everything out in advance and then just execute it. The hand does something to the thinking. It’s a give-and-take. Installation view: How Many Angels Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin?, Nordic Countries Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen NM: What did the ones for the Biennale say?KK: They all dwell on this woman lying down, the whole world on her, and also the mother, and you don’t know if she’s fading or coming back. There’s a flat, see-through relief made of wood that’s almost like smoke, a spirit emanating from her. There’s a very fat mouse that weighs her down; he’s the male character, a dominant, guardian figure, but you don’t know if he’s a friend or a threat. He comes from a cuddly toy I had as a child. Then there’s an apple figure – taken from an older work where my mother was a deer, my father a tree, and I was the apple child. Here, only the apple child remains. It’s curious and mischievous, and partly it’s there for compositional reasons; the work is mainly brown and black, and the deep red apple is a colour note. Then there’s a large bronze warrior woman, trapped in leaves but breaking free. She has real power. I specifically wanted something raw and angry in this, not a group of cute figures. NM: Can you describe the body of work you’re showing?KK: The main piece is a very large tree trunk, twelve metres long, that is also a woman. She has a face, hair, and stands on branches like an animal on many legs, with a root at the other end. The whole structure is covered in Swedish woven

Kim Simonsson’s Moss Giants Come to Norrviken Kim Simonsson’s moss giants were born in utopia, imagining a community without hierarchy, where every role, from philosopher to caretaker, carries equal weight. Now two of them, Nest and Thinker, have found a permanent home in the forest landscape of Norrviken in Båstad, where they stand among moss-covered stones as though they were always there. Natalia Muntean: Nest and Thinker were created for Lille3000 in 2022. How does it feel to see them move into a permanent home, and does permanence change how you think about a piece?Kim Simonsson: I am very happy that almost all of the 11 giants created for the “Utopia” arts festival in Lille in 2022 have found a permanent home. Two are in private collections in the USA; one is in the centre of the historic Austrian town of Gmunden; one is in front of a shopping mall in Roubaix; and four are in a forest near Söderlångvik Manor on Kimitö Island in southern Finland. The sculptures have found homes in a wide variety of locations, which is wonderful to see. I am very happy that they have found a new life after the main event. When they were first created, I wasn’t thinking about them being spread around the world, but I am glad that people appreciate them individually and in different settings. NM: Norrviken is a designed landscape with over a century of history. Did that context influence which two figures you felt belonged here?KS: There were only three sculptures left to choose from, but these two, by coincidence, fit the setting of Norrviken perhaps best of all eleven. One is the boy with a bird’s nest on his back – many birds are likely to nest in the forest where it is located. The other is the girl, a melancholic artist, and I’m sure there have been melancholic artistic types pondering life in the park. Part of the mythology I created for the moss giants is that they originated in the Scandinavian forests and later wandered to Lille. It is very fitting that they have now returned from their European journey to their home, a forest in Norrviken, with many stories to tell. NM: As the moss giants age in place, they will literally become part of the ecosystem. Does that feel like completion to you, or loss?KS: I would be happy if real moss and lichen began to grow on the sculptures, and if birds made nests in them. Eventually, the sculptures will become part of their surroundings, like large stones or fallen trees. NM: Each figure has a role that is described as equally essential to the group. How do you decide what roles the community needs, and how does a new figure come into being?KS: The theme of the art festival in Lille was Utopia. I began to imagine a utopian group and considered what kinds of skills would be needed within it. There was no leader, and since it was a utopian community, all skills were equally valued. There was, for example, a doctor, a gatherer, and a teacher, but also a philosopher and a girl whose role was simply to think rather than to act. The figure with the nest was the one who communicated with the animal world. NM: You started shaping figures in snow as a child, while others built snowmen. Do you think your relationship to form has changed, or is it still essentially the same impulse?KS: I am a maker, and I love being able to create the figures I imagine out of clay. My aim is to refine my skills so that I can give the figures at least a small sense of life, so they can connect with the viewer’s unconscious and perhaps take them back to a cherished childhood memory. NM: Is there a figure you have made that you found hardest to let go of?KS: For me, it is an essential part of my profession to create works for an audience, not just for myself. So I am always very happy when someone wants to live with one or more of my creations. Usually, the most important sculpture is the one I am working on at that moment.

Shared Realities: CHART Art Fair Looks Outward for 2026 Now in its twelfth year, CHART Art Fair continues to redefine what a Nordic art fair can be. Since the final edition of CHART Architecture, a ten-year collaboration that invited young architects to create pavilions in the Charlottenborg courtyard, the Copenhagen-based fair has shifted its public programme outward: into metro stations, onto running routes through the city, and toward a new total installation format under the banner CHART Public. In 2026, the theme is Shared Realities. Julie Quottrup Silbermann, Director of CHART Art Fair, describes the shift as a response to something urgent. “We’re in a time of so many crises, with everyone attached to their phones and living in an AI-mediated world. We want to create an environment where people actually want to come together and interact with one another – to share a moment, listen to music, talk about art. That’s what Shared Reality is about.” Alongside the new courtyard installation, the 2026 edition will expand its performance programme beyond Charlottenborg, deepen its collaboration with the Copenhagen Metro, and build on the Start Collecting initiative now entering its fourth year. Meanwhile, plans for an independently published art book fair in November signal CHART’s ambition to remain active and visible throughout the year, not only during the four days each August. Natalia Muntean: Last year marked the end of CHART Architecture and the introduction of CHART Public. What was the thinking behind that transition?Julie Quottrup Silbermann: After ten years of inviting young architects to create pavilions, we felt it was time for something new. CHART Public came out of that – an open call for a total installation in the courtyard, open to architects, designers, and artists. We were looking for something that could frame the entire public programme, serve as a kind of wayfinding through the spaces at Charlottenborg, and leave no waste. Sustainability was a hard requirement from the start. Photographer: Joakim Züger BARSK Projects We received an impressive number of proposals very quickly. An external jury of architects, a designer, and a theatre director with a background in scenography selected British architect Samuel Charles Barratt. His installation, Re-Route, drew on the visual language of the surrounding streets: scaffolding systems and traffic cones brought into the two courtyards, creating a wave of cones hanging from the entrance toward Kongens Nytorv and through to the second courtyard. Everything was rented and returned to the municipality. There was no waste at all. NM: And the 2026 installation – what can you share about it?JQS: We’re continuing with the same format: an open call for a total installation in both courtyards. The theme this year is Shared Reality. We want to create a room, or really a set of rooms, where people genuinely want to linger, talk, listen to music, and be present. We’re also encouraging applicants to work across disciplines, bringing together designers, architects, and artists in a single proposal.  NM: You’re not on the selection jury yourself. Why not?JQS: I don’t want to be the one making the final call. Last year’s jury was deliberately diverse – people who understand how things are actually built and who can support the winning team through the process. I want external eyes that can assess what would genuinely work in those two courtyards, rather than just what I find beautiful. The jury can also see the sustainability question from a practical angle: what can actually be built, used, and returned. NM: The Nordics have strong ties to design, film, and performance. How is CHART pushing the boundaries of the fair format itself?JQS: Performance is going to be a much larger part of the public programme this year, and we want to move it beyond the walls of Charlottenborg, into Kongens Nytorv and, importantly, into the Copenhagen Metro. We started working with the Metro last year: during CHART, video works ran on screens across all stations between the regular commercial content, and we had one performance take place inside a station. It generated a lot of interest. So now we’re in dialogue about how to develop that further. Bringing art into the commute rather than waiting for people to come to us. We are also expanding the running tours we launched last year. Three routes, between five and twelve kilometres, are mapped on Google with notes on every artwork you pass. We want to extend these to other Nordic capitals; we are a Nordic art fair, and there’s so much public art across those cities. And this year we’re adding a strand to the programme called ‘Wellness in Art’, drawing on research around how art affects wellbeing. It gives all of this, the runs, the performances, the public programme, a shared conceptual thread. NM: What’s the current status of the Tivoli collaboration?JQS: We are exploring something more focused than before: rather than placing works across the whole of Tivoli, the idea is a dedicated sculpture garden near the lake, working with the garden itself as the context. If it comes together, it would again extend beyond the four days of the fair. The Tivoli exhibition last year ran for a month afterwards, which creates a real difference. August is so dense with openings and events, and having something that continues into September, when things quiet down, has its own value. Photographer: Joakim Züger BARSK Projects NM: The Start Collecting initiative is now entering its fourth year. What impact have you seen?JQS: The galleries report more sales from that section each year, which is the clearest measure. Last year, we moved it into the chapel, The room between the two courtyards,  and created a more considered environment with seating, so people could actually sit with the works. It’s become a recognised part of the fair; people come back to it specifically, and they know it as the place where unique art is available at more accessible price points. There’s also a broader shift happening. You can see more media coverage of collections starting,