• DELFT STAG BEETLE 

    An interview with Magnus Gjoen

    Written by Michaela Widergren

    Magnus Gjoen is the former Vivienne Westwood denim and graphic designer, who abruptly changed his career from fashion to art while trying to decorate his own home. I got the opportunity for a quick Q&A with the London based artist who is using objects containing strong symbolic meanings in a beautiful and sensible way.

    MM: How’s London, and what are you doing today?

    MG: London. Well right now I’m in the bathtub which is the only place I have time to write this (or dictate to my iPad). There’s a lot to do with three shows on the horizon, moving to another house and quitting smoking (electronic).

    MM: How did you end up where you are?

    MG: I’ve been doing art for a few years now. But I started working in denim and fashion design for the last 10 years. It all started with wanting to decorate my own flat some years ago, and before I knew it, and with encouragement from friends, it had snowballed into having to leave my day job and become a full-time artist.
    It wasn’t just about what do I want on my walls it was also about what other people would hang on their walls.

    MM: Your artwork is edgy but also a bit romantic, so what do you want the work to convey to others?

    MG: I tend to look for beauty in the macabre. It’s about showing the audience something which they have a different relationship to and changing this and making them see that it can also be seen in a different light. In the end it’s about beauty and the unexpected, but also play to peoples’ emotions towards certain objects.

    MM: Do you get inspired by art, fashion or life itself? What’s the most important source of inspiration?

    MG: I get inspired by everything around me. Art is for sure one of my biggest inspirations whether it’s street, contemporary, modern or Renaissance art. You can take little snippets from each one, whether it’s a shape or color, it all coalesces into something new or different. I’ve been living between London, Bologna and Florence for the past two years for this reason; the more you see the more you get inspired.

    MM: What do you have planned for the future?

    MG: I’ve got a few shows coming up, two in London and a solo show in Florence. We’re doing a lot of porcelain pieces for the Florence show, so that’s exciting. And we’re currently working with Converse to make an art piece for the Amy Winehouse Foundation.

    MM: Coming to Scandinavia anytime soon?

    MG: Nothing on the calendar yet, but I’ll go back to Norway for a week to see family at some point this summer and there is a long overdue trip back to Copenhagen where I used to live.

    BREAK GLASS FOR NEW BEGINNING 
    left
    THAT DOG WON’T HUNT   
    right
    DIVINE RETRIBUTION  
    AK DELFT  
    left 
    LAST NIGHT I HAD A DREAM
    right
    FLOWERBOMB 
    left
    ROSES ARE DEAD
    right
    MY HEART IS YOURS FOREVER PLATINA
    ITS A FEARFUL THING TO LOVE SOMETHING THAT DEATH CAN TOUCH 
    left
    BREAK GLASS FOR RESURRECTION
    right
    DELFT MACHINE GUN
  • An interview with Fredrik Wikholm

    Written by Michaela Widergren

    THE DEDICATED PEOPLE

    It’s early summer, the sun is a bit to brave for the season and I’m on my way to meet up with Fredrik Wikholm the co-founder and creative director of men’s clothing brand: Uniforms for the Dedicated. We meet up outside their office space but decide to take a walk along the crooked streets of Södermalm to visit their concept store, located on Krukmakargatan 24. The store is industrial modern with some hints of green and there’s hip hop music playing in the speakers. Outside the large display window there’s a white bench, inviting for the passing to rest. But the interview has started earlier, while walking there.

    MM: Has the journey’s been long, when did you guys start?

    FW: Yes, it’s been a while, we started up somewhere around the autumn of 2007, but just before then a bunch of us were living in the states, we had a snowboard collective in the mountains of Vail Valley, Colorado.

    MM: I’ve heard Uniforms for the Dedicated was a snowboard brand from the beginning, is that so?

    FW: I guess in a way we were a snowboard brand, that’s where we came from, what we knew. We never referred to ourselves as a snowboard brand but our values came from it. At the time, we were mostly living for snowboarding, climbing and surfing. We wanted to become a great example of entrepreneurship inspired by learning and by doing; with that we started a platform for creatives. We’d done some t-shirts before and therefore thought about fashion.

    MM: Did any of you guys have an education?

    FW: No, not at all. Well, I’ve got a degree in Behavioral Science, some of us studied marketing but most important of all we learned from life. We were totally newbies in the fashion business and just wanted to do our own thing.

    Fredrik talked about how they all were so determined to do everything themselves and maybe that’s why they got a slow start. They were pretty crappy at doing research but learned by doing and by doing a lot of errors. They didn’t just do fashion, they created music, art installations and even attempted producing a movie.
    MM: What kind of music were you doing?

    FW: Mostly electronic, one of the co-founders and a close friend to me, Jonas Rathsman, who’s now a known new disco and house producer and another guy that’s also very successful today, Nils Krogh, produced Uniforms for the Dedicated music.

    MM: How was the collective accepted? Did people get confused when you focused on so many genres?

    FW: Yes, I think it was kind of confusing, but the people who liked it, really liked it. You could buy our music, clothes and furniture while looking at our conceptual music videos, you could take part of our philosophy in many ways.

    MM: How did the first collection turn out in all of that?

    FW: Well, we managed to make clothes. It wasn’t really a collection, it was more of a hodgepodge of garments. But we made a few pieces that was greatly received and I guess a few pieces that did not create a lot of buzz.

    MM: Who was the main designer?

    FW: It’s varied… from the beginning it was Mike, who’s now our sustainability director. We quickly realized that bringing in some external competence wouldn’t be such a bad idea. When the company grew we could hire new people.

    Fredrik and I reach the store and take a seat on the bench outside; this is when we start talking about the true essence and passion of Uniforms for the Dedicated. Fredrik tells me that the brand is mostly about taking a stand and doing what they can to keep our planet up and running. All this time I thought this was a regular men’s fashion label. I was completely wrong. This is a brand about recycling and preserving.

    FW: We have a goal, that in five years: Uniforms for the Dedicated will be the leading company in sustainability, in the world. The concept that we are trying to reach and create for ourselves would also be relevant for other types of organizations and companies. It shouldn’t matter if you’re a large company or small, or if you’re in fashion or some other business.

    MM: How are you working with sustainability?

    FW: We do what we can with the resources that we have. That includes everything from having a well functional waste sorting to looking over the logistics in the company. When producing a new collection we always aim to have the smallest possible effect on the environment. If you purchase a jersey or a t-shirt I can guarantee you that 80% of the cotton is organic and this August you will be able to choose if you want to buy your new suit in 100% recycled wool. We try not to mind the trends but instead create pieces that are classical, when thinking about trends, the relevance of the garment disappears way too fast. We need to think ahead and in the long run, by offering our customers commercially desirable and sustainable clothes that can be used more than one season. To be honest, I’m not that interested in being in the fashion industry, I’m here because I’m interested in having an influence in the fashion business.

    Only using eco-developed materials isn’t good enough, Uniforms for the Dedicated’s main focus is to use already existing materials. The problem with recycling organic materials is making the quality as fine as the newly produced products. It’s hard and because of that it offers an easy way out for the bigger companies, they just say, the products won’t reach their standards. But there are ways, Fredrik tells me they work with recycled wool from a place called Prato, just outside Venice and that the village has a long knowledge and tradition of recycling, from the beginning because of economic reasons.

    FW: Another way of keeping the planets’ resources intact, is not buying at all and for that we have a rental system, so if you’re in the need of a suit you can rent one in the Uniforms for the Dedicated store. We’re also working with a new project together with the non-profit second hand stores in our neighborhood, the idea is that after you bought something, when you get back home, you turn the shopping bag inside out, collect an old piece out of your closet, put it in the bag and send it away to one of the second hand stores. The bag already has an address printed and the shipping’s been paid for. One piece in, one piece out

    MM: This is a large part of your image, right? So tell me about another part, the older male model that you’ve been working with for a while, Aiden Shaw, how did you find him and what does he help you represent?

    FW: From the beginning, it was a suggestion from my friend and our photographer Kalle Gustavsson. He told me to check him out and I’ve always disliked how some brands show their collections on seventeen year old boys. I mean that’s not who we or our customers are. Aiden’s a guy who’s taken bold decisions and he always seems to be looking for excitement; he’s an old gay porn star, but he’s also a musician, a poet and a writer and environmentally engaged. Somehow I think he summons very well who we are and want to be. The idea is always to work with models who can bring something more than being beautiful to the table.

    MM: You definitely got the best models last fashion week, all of those guys all looked really cool.

    FW: Thank you.., when we put together our fashion shows we of course want the models to look good and casual cool but it’s also essential that they reflect our customers and the people that we want to see in our clothes, that’s why all of the men walking down the runway were in different shapes, colors, and ages and in the end we got a lot of positive reactions for that. I’m not interested in having 15 pink people walk down the runway, it takes more, and any chance we get to show that the world is a diverse, cultural and colorful place we will take.

    There’s a freshness in how Fredrik talks about the planet, often referenced to as mother earth. He’s political and not ashamed to talk about it, nothing’s not important. As a lot of young people in Sweden, Fredrik says he’s sick and tired of the political situation and that no one really speaks up about it. There’s a big pink elephant in the room that makes most people look the other way. I ask him what he’ll vote for in the upcoming election, he answer’s either the feminist or the green party. He also says he’s hoping for a matriarchal rule in the future, maybe the world would be a better place than it is now…

  • photography by JOANNA HÜTTNER LEMOINE

    An interview with John Peter Nilsson

    Written by Mari Florer

    Nils Dardel – in the heart of Moderna Museet

    For one year, John Peter Nilsson has been preparing the exhibition “Nils Dardel and the Modern Age” currently showing at the Stockholms Museum Of Modern Art, Moderna Museet.
    – Nils Dardel (1888-1943) is highly relevant today because of the male narcissism and metro sexuality in contemporary society – the hipster as a dandy says the curator.

    This is Moderna Museet’s second exhibition of the artist. When Dardel’s work was shown in Stockholm in 1988, at the height of the yuppie era, the zeitgeist was quite different.

    Gender studies was not as developed then as it is today. Today we can discuss how his ambivalent sexuality actually shines through in his work. And if we go back to Dardel’s own time, that subject was an absolute taboo says John Peter Nilsson.

    Homosexual relationships were criminalized in Sweden until 1944. Nils Dardel himself was in a marriage and had a daughter, all while having relationships with other men.

    On a superelliptic table in a conference room in the basement of the museum, John Peter Nilsson shows me a map of the premises. He waves his pen in the air when he talks about the exhibition, pointing his pen to the map and explaining details of the display. His passion for the subject is apparent and he truly loves to talk about Dardel. Doubtless, he could talk for hours - and I would be very happy to be the audience.

    Still, Nilsson is a busy man full of restless energy with a myriad of things to take care of before the vernissage. In addition to being curator for the Dardel exhibition he is also the director of Moderna Museet’s subsidiary in Malmö.

    He describes the big entry. An 80 square meter wall painted black introduces the exhibition with the scenography from Maison du Fous (Asylum) that Dardel did for the Swedish Ballet, in Paris in 1920.

    The observer will meet total darkness, which is meant to allude to the artist’s more neurotic sides he says.

    In the maze-like corridors underground we walk in the direction of what John Peter Nilsson describes as the heart of Moderna Museet. Nilsson is a tall man and his long legs keep moving at a steady pace, his hands behind his back, upper body tilting slightly forward. It’s hard to keep up.

    Along the walls there are cabinets and doors, all in metal. On one of the heavy steel doors there is a yellow and black sign, “Beware of the packing officer” it reads. Nilsson is trying to open the door, but fails. We are looking for someone with the right keycard – maybe the “packing officer” that we are supposed to be wary of?

    We walk round and round, back and forth in the labyrinthine corridors. Everywhere it looks the same. Could he be doing this for security reasons? Maybe he wants me to get lost.

    The Moderna Museet has previously been robbed of several works of art including Matisse, Picasso and Braque, together worth over half a billion.

    We stop at some kind of junction in the dark basement.
    There she is. Our “packing officer” he shouts, hearty and loud so she can hear us coming up behind her.

    Tova Bjurström turns around, looking at us curiously. She unlocks the door and we enter her enormous office. We stand in a big basement inventory with sliding doors made of a metal grid. The floor is strewn with a lot of wooden boxes marked “FRAGILE” written in red. Each box is also marked with a specific number, which is forbidden to photograph.

    The air is damp. Bjurström tells me it’s because the paintings must adapt to a correct temperature before being unpacked.

    It takes time to gather all the works and build an exhibition. There are many people involved in the process. It is fortunate for us that Moderna Museet has such a good reputation among museums worldwide. It makes it easier for us to borrow art, Nilsson says.

    Most of the time there is no problem borrowing paintings. But occasionally Nilsson needs to write a kind of an “extortion letter” to some museum directors reminding them that they in their turn have borrowed art from Moderna museet.

    Among the priceless art treasures in Bjurström’s office there is portrait of Dardel painted by Iwan Constantin in 1910. Looking at Constantin’s work and comparing it to Dardel’s self-portrait from 1923 he looks much younger in the later one. The first one much more realistic in style. Of course this may have something to do with the artist being vain but it was also a common feature in Dardel’s style of painting.

    Dardel was a popular portrait painter. He got a lot of work for the rich and wealthy and he portrayed them as they wanted to look, not primarily how they really appeared. Obviously, it was equally important to paint himself young and fresh.

    I have found out that Dardel’s most expensive painting The Waterfall (sold for $3.7 million in 2012, the highest sum paid for a Swedish modernist art work) is borrowed for the exhibition.

    Where’s “The Waterfall” now? I ask.
    It has not arrived yet. It travels with a courier and we do not know where the painting is until minutes before it arrives. None of us know who the owner is. It’s top secret Nilsson says.

    The Moderna Museet has borrowed the painting through the auction house Bukowskis. John Peter Nilsson has tried to figure out who the owner of the painting is but it turned out his guesswork was all wrong.

    Do you want to see “The Dying Dandy”? he asks.

    We follow Bjurström, dressed in thin white cotton gloves, blue jeans, and a large oblique mint green shirt striped in black. Slowly she pulls out the painting that gained iconic status in the yuppie era of the 1980’s. Looking at it makes me think: is it the subject of the story, the colors, or the knowledge of its value that is hitting me with such force? Would any valuable painting whatsoever leave me equally impressed?

    There is something special about Dardel that catches my eye. I believe it is the motif, the deep blue, green and red colors and my love of the naivistic manner. And maybe I recognize myself in the Dying Dandy’s self-pitying and exaltation of his own importance, lying in his green velvet suit with a mirror in his right hand. The dandy’s left hand resting on his heart. Three women take care of him and with Dardel himself again in the background mourning. Why is he mourning? Love? Death?

    I think it was the painting’s motif - that everything could end any second - that attracted a new generation of yuppies in the 80s. I assume that they did not quite believe in themselves. All of a sudden they had earned themselves an exceedingly amount of money, Nilsson says.

    Most of the paintings are inspired by events in Nils Dardel’s life.

    – The stories became a documentation of his everyday life.

    Art critics around the 1910s were not particularly fond of Nils Dardel at the beginning of his career. Partly because of the artist’s personality: his modern lifestyle and free approach to relationships - but also because of his artistic manner and choice of motives.

    – Dardel was a contemporary artist, but he was not a modernist in the sense that he was trying to convey a new artistic language. The critics found it difficult to place him in the spirit that prevailed. It was when he developed his style further that his art became more recognized.

    We look around at the paintings. In several of them there are parallel stories, as in a theater. There are a lot of symbols and he often works with contrasts in sizes. One painting truly stands out in the office. A picture of native’s heads hanging tied in the hair.

    Dardel was a provocateur. He grew up in an aristocratic environment but he mocked the upper class in many ways. He removed the aristocratic prefix from his surname and he admired Oscar Wilde’s thoughts that anyone can become a dandy regardless of background. Although Dardel partially disassociated from the class-society and made fun of the upper class, it still didn’t make him popular among the working class either.

    Is it stressful to be museum director and at the same time plan an exhibition like this? I ask.

    – There is a lot to do and I need to travel a lot. But I have huge machinery behind me to help me with the practical stuff.
    He thinks it’s incredibly fun to do this Dardel exhibition. A true dream job.

    At the moment, he is trying to find something sensational which can attract visitors to the inauguration.
    – I hope that Nina Lagergren (Raoul Wallenberg’s sister and Nils Dardel’s niece) will bring the hand mirror the dying dandy is holding in painting.

    The curator wants to attract both old and new visitors to the exhibition.
    – Not everyone is enthusiastic when it comes to looking at old art with new perspectives. There is a conservative audience who wants to interpret the artist in the context when he was active, he says.

    John Peter Nilsson is looking forward to the opening.
    Do you know where I can find a green velvet suit in my size? he asks, with a big smile on his face. I’ve been looking everywhere but still haven’t found it yet. Please let me know if you find one.

    The “Packing Officer” Tova Bjurström
    John Peter Nilsson and our Features Editor Marie Brunnberg talks about the artist’s life
    Portrait of Dardel painted by Iwan Constantin, 1910
    John Peter Nilsson with Nils Dardels palette in his hands
    Two weeks before the exhibition opening at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm
    Nils Dardel, “The Girl with the torch and a burning heart”, 1931
    Two weeks before the exhibition opening at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm
    In the heart of the Moderna Museet: Nils Dardel, “The Dying Dandy”, 1918

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