• Jesper Nyrén

    Written by Art & Culture

    Jesper Nyrén explores in his paintings how color and texture create spatiality, and how the experience of a landscape can form new spaces in painting. In the visually rich and tactile surfaces of the paintings, we can become involved in a nature with both our gaze and our bodies. The compositions seem to consist of building blocks that support and reinforce each other. Each building block has its own color tone and weight, and together they form a structure that is equally parts light and architecture. Jesper Nyrén was born in 1979 and studied at the Royal Institute of Art from 2002-2007. He lives and works in Stockholm.

    What are you working on right now? Tell us about your exhibition during Stockholm Art Week?
    My exhibition during Stockholm art week is at Teatergrillen. It consists of paintings on canvas and paper. Right now I am working with an exhibition that will take place in Bohusläns museum in the summer (together with Katarina Löfström) and a commissioned work for a subway station where I work with ceramics.

    What inspired you to become an artist, and how has your artistic journey evolved over time?
    I always loved painting and drawing and this thing of being absorbed in that private, slow process. I think that over the years I have come to concentrate more and more on the most fundamental elements of that process - the materials and color themselves, scale, composition and atmosphere

    What is your creative process like, and how do you approach developing new ideas and concepts for your work?
    I work with different places in mind. To try and recreate a light or an atmosphere that I have experienced but through color and relations rather than figuration. I work with a group of paintings at a time. Before I start to work on the actual paintings there’s a lot of sketching and trying different ideas. And then as I start painting almost all of those ideas fail. So I have to work my way back to something. It’s a long process of changing and adjusting and going over everything many times. It is that long and slow process that I want. To spend time painting.

    Can you tell me about a specific artwork or series of works that are particularly meaningful to you and why?
    I have made a few works called ”Notes”. They consist of many paintings and sometimes also photographs that are hung in a long line. The separate parts are almost monochrome but are painted in very different techniques, with different materials and tempo and so forth. Then I choose which parts will be included and in which order. It’s like modular paintings that can be changed and rearranged infinitely and also be composed in relation to the space where they are installed. I like that because it´s a very intuitive and experimental process.

    What do you think of Stockholm as an art city?
    It’s great! A lot of good exhibitions to see and a nice and familiar atmosphere

    Do you have a favorite Swedish Artist?
    Barbro Östlihn

    Do you have a favorite bar or restaurant in Stockholm?
    Teatergrillen of course :)

  • Julia Peirone

    Written by Art & Culture

    Julia Peirone is a photographer who is famous for her pictures of teenage girls. The way she captures them is by having them pose with their eyes half-closed and mouths slightly open while in motion. This creates images that seem to reveal the inner feelings of the young women she portrays. A journalist named Joanna Persman once described these poses as not being particularly flattering, but rather authentic depictions of the confusion that often characterizes teenage life. According to Persman, young people are a mystery not only to adults, but also to themselves.

    What are you working on right now? /Tell us about your exhibition during Stockholm Art Week?
    I have some ideas for new works but too early to say anything. I used to have a little bank of ideas and when the time is right I pick one to go on with.
    Right now there is one or two I am thinking of.I recently finished Squeaky Stardust that I will show at Stockholm Art Week.

    The installation ‘Squeaky Stardust’ (2023) features both a video work as well as a series of polaroid-like images.
    A heavily made-up model can be seen slowly turning around with music playing in the background.
    Reminiscent of a ballerina in a music box, she circles around and around. A female voice can be heard saying ‘smile’
    and the girl complies over and over again. The camera flashes capturing her grimacing, and her makeup smears when
    she tears up. The attention from the unseen photographer becomes distressing while a toy squeaks covering any vocal expression from the protagonist.

    What inspired you to become an artist, and how has your artistic journey evolved over time?
    The idea of having a fun life and being free.
    It has been an interesting and fun artistic journey (I have been lucky) but I have also worked hard.
    I am very grateful for the possibilities I had to show my work and all the attention I got. I know how hard it is. There is a lot of good artists/art outhere that should be shown more.

    What is your creative process like, and how do you approach developing new ideas and concepts for your work?
    I see, I think (not too much), I do and then I think more.
    Most of all I try to have fun while I am doing my work. I often start with a rather banal idea that makes me laugh or wonder about something.
    I trust my intuition that it will come out deeper things from those ideas. I like to see how the process leads me through the right way.
    I try to be sensitive to what happens under the process. If there are mistakes, I see them as possibilities instead of failures. I often get surprised.

    Can you tell me about a specific artwork or series of works that are particularly meaningful to you and why?
    The series More than Violet (the portraits of girls when their poses are out of control) these pictures where important both in my work (pointed out a more concentrated direction) and in my career. The pictures also embrace a lot of things that represent who I am as an artist.

    What do you think of Stockholm as an art city?
    It's good, of course as an artist I would like it to be more experimental. Unfortunately the market is deciding too much what is shown in galleries for example. Stockholm is a good art city concerning that is not the biggest city in the world. But I would like to be more surprised and and see more strange and `impossible` art.

    Do you have a favorite Swedish Artist?
    Yes, Barbro Ötshlin.

    Do you have a favorite bar or restaurant in Stockholm?
    Yes, Cafe on hornsgatan/mariatorget.
    The best coffee in town and nicest people working there. Also a very nice bar.

  • A Kassen

    Written by Art & Culture

    A Kassen the Copenhagen-based collective comprised of Christian Bretton Meyer, Morten Steen Hebsgaard, Soren Petersen, and Tommy Petersen plays with traditional notions of authorship, appropriation, and appraisal. Described by the artists as “performative installation and sculpture,” their work deconstructs and reconstitutes everyday objects, artworks by other artists, and historical exhibitions to question canonized styles and modes of display related to art history and institutional culture.

    What are you working on right now? /Tell us about your exhibition during Stockholm Art Week?
    In Stockholm we are working on an exhibition at CFHILL that will consist of mainly sculptural works. We will show works from the series we call View from Below, Bronze Pour and Bronze Paintings. Those are works that deals with chance in a material that is normally used in a highly controlled manner. Working as a group we are less interested in the hands-on shaping of objects but more interested in developing concepts where the shapes and aesthetics are results of not the eye but a thought process. In Bronze Pour and Bronze Paintings we are experimenting with the qualities of bronze as a raw material.

    What inspired you to become an artist?
    There will be four individual and different answers to that question. But for all of us we saw the possibilities in art making as a way of relating to the world in an abstract and poetic way.

    How has your artistic journey evolved over time?
    Over the time we have worked more and more on public commissions and site-specific projects in larger scale. These types of projects have a totally different timeline and can spand over many years. When we started working together the energy and effort four guys could put in doing smaller exhibitions was rather explosive - it was possible to put up a show in a formiddag. Still our artistic intentions and interests are pretty much still the same.

    What is your creative process like, and how do you approach developing new ideas and concepts for your work?
    Our approach depends very much on for what and where the artwork is supposed to be shown. But in general we use the stories and the uniqueness of that exact place or site. As a group we work very site-specific and it has become the natural way of kickstarting the dialogue and the thought process to place ourselves together in the space. Concepts and ideas come rather intuitively from the bank of almost 20 years of dialogue and from that dialogue subjects and a common view on the world arises.

    What do you think of Stockholm as an art city?
    We didn’t spend very much time in Stockholm so far so our impressions of the city is based on a very narrow knowledge. But a visit to Moderna Museet is always a safe bet. Great and courages international quality exhibitions with younger artists, for instance Lea Porsager and Adrián Villar Rojas.

    Do you have a favorite Swedish Artist?
    It might not be our all time favorite artist but a work that we all have been visiting and is fascinated by is Lars Vilks projects Nimis and Arx at Kullaberg. First of all the effort the visitor have to go through to experience the work sets the scene. You have to travel and walk for some time before meeting the artwork that is so much more than an artwork. It is architecture, a performance, a protest but most of all it is for everybody and breaks down the barrier that can be around art. Visiting the site that is also known as the micronation Ladonia is so surprising and beautiful and impressive.

    Do you have a favorite bar or restaurant in Stockholm?
    This is our first solo exhibition in the city and we haven’t spend too much time in Stockholm yet so I guess you could tell us where to go… but a place that would be interesting to visit is the artist Carsten Höllers restaurant Brutalisten. The artworks he does has a certain flavour to it, maybe what you get at the restaurant taste a bit like that too.

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