International Art News

Carl Larsson: Self-portrait ( in the new studio), 1912. Malmö Art Museum. Photo: Andreas Nilsson, Malmö Art Museum

From February 10 to April 29, 2012 – Finnish National Gallery
The aim of this beloved Swedish artist was to paint himself into the hearts of his audience. The art of Carl Larsson (1853–1919) and his atelier home in Sundborn have indeed had an enormous impact on the perceptions of Swedes and other Europeans of what constitutes a better everyday life. Carl Larsson’s visual imagery – which owed a great deal also to the input of his wife Karin – has provided the inspiration for light and well-lit interior decoration for generations.

The exhibition at Ateneum focuses on themes related to the home, as well as on the large watercolours that Larsson painted in Gréz-sur-Loing in France which first marked his artistic breakthrough. Filling the entire second floor of the Ateneum Art Museum, the exhibition includes over a hundred paintings. The exhibition also presents Carl and Karin Larsson as designers of furniture and art handicrafts.

Larsson’s guiding principles were light, lightness and joy, even though his own childhood was dark and he was prone to depression. In a way he created his own happiness, and this exhibition invites viewers to consider what in fact constitutes a good life. Factors that connect contemporary viewers to Larsson’s life include the home, the family, a sense of community, children, gardening and interior decoration.

The exhibition is produced in collaboration with the Turku Art Museum, and an accompanying book was published in September 2011. Ateneum’s exhibition Carl Larsson – In Search of the Good Life is curated by Timo Huusko, Curator at the museum, and the exhibition architect is Minna Santakari.

Museum Hours

Excess and Ascesis (sponge), c-print, 2010

From 14 of January 2011 to 13 of March 2011 – Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma | Finnish National Gallery
Saara Ekström (b. 1965) creates innovative combinations using different techniques in her videos, photographs and installations. She is interested in natural and artificial materials that embody strong symbolic values.
This major exhibition presents a review of the artist’s wide-ranging work over the course of ten years. The charged moods in the works range from the poetic to the grotesque, from exposed to concealed. Ekström shows how familiar everyday things and objects can have a secret
life.

The themes in the works include humanity and femininity, which the artist approaches through the use of metaphors. “I like the unpredictability and surprising qualities of materials. Some of the works can become fragile or disappear, others are preserved forever. I do not use materials as an end in themselves, they support the themes I address in my work. I use them in an attempt to create a whole that is simultaneously seductive and repulsive,” Ekström says.

Museum Hours

Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma – Finnish National Gallery
Until the 15th of August 2010
The first extensive Finnish exhibition by Denise Grünstein (b. 1950), one of the best known Swedish photographic artists, showcases approximately 40 large works of photographic art and one video installation.

The show exhibits four series of photographs, offering a cross-section of Denise Grünstein’s work in the 2000s. She finds the subject matter that is used from her personal experiences, memories, and roots. The lyrical, atmospheric photographs have a strong relationship with art history, romantic painting, and surrealistic photography. The artist works with traditional film and uses an analogue large format view camera. She emphasises stage-like, artificial ambiance in her photographs.

The Figure Out series, after which the exhibition is named, emphasises hair, behind which the characters in the photographs are mysteriously veiled. The series includes Grünstein’s first video installation All Flesh is Grass. The name refers to the perishing, temporary nature of everything and is accompanied by movement, and music composed by Morton Feldman.

Grünstein emphasises the significance of the location in the large colour photograph works of the Figure in Landscape series. The landscape sets the stage for stories with no beginning and no end. The colours of the glowing green forest surround the staged, dreamlike, even threatening scenes in the middle ground between the real and the imaginary. In the series Malplacé (2005), there is a nostalgic dimension, as the artist returns to the places of her childhood near Hanko. The black and white series Zone V (1998) was born as a result from the artist’s travels throughout Eastern Europe. The images refer to the artist’s Jewish heritage.
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