GOOD BUY

Every year about 100 works are bought for the Vasteras Konstmuseum Collection. Many of these works are simple graphic prints or drawings that will be lent to different departments of Vasteras City council. Many of the artists being introduced in this exhibition are young and many of them are women!

Sirpo Virtanen/1940-2000/ arrived as a Finnish war child to Vasteras and returned to his native country after the war. After the death of the artist in 2001 the Finnish Institute in Stockholm arranged a remembrance exhibition with, above all, the artist’s drawings and the letters Sirpo Virtanen wrote to his family in Vasteras after his return to Finland. He suffered from grave homesickness that finally resulted in him being adopted by his family in Vasteras as an adult. During a period of time Sirpo Virtanen worked at the theatre in Vasteras as well as doing his regular work at Nyckelvikskolan. At the exhibition in Stockholm Vasteras Konstmuseum was given the possibility to select some works for the collection, a welcomed complement to the earlier acquired works.

Sigurdur Gudmundsson is Islandic and lives in China. The sculpture Molecule From a Journey asks questions that may be confusing. The polished diabas is a solemn material that is often used for monuments. Here, the stone meets a pair of Wellington boots. Everything is done with careful precision and the stones can only be standing upright in one position, where the polished surfaces meet each other in a right angle. The boots are exactly the same height as the larger stone. Everyday meets the consummate refinement in this monument over the simple things in life.

Christina Eriksson-Fredriksson and Christofer Fredriksson are an artist couple who work together. Both artists are trained at the Academy if Fine Arts, Umea University, in Umea where they also live. In these two works it is possible to learn something about their relationship by looking through their two carefully bounded sketchbooks. One line is for Christina; one is for Christofer. Carin Ellberg is a painter and sculptor living in Stockholm. Everyday life, the home, the children and their toys have become the starting point for many of the artist’s works. Carin Ellberg often starts her day by painting a self-portrait; today there are several hundreds! Now included in the museum collection is Four Portraits. Using the same primary form in plaster the artist has made a self-portrait as well as portraits of three artist colleagues: Katrine Helmersson, Helen Billgren and Katarina Norling. They are all portrayed with a material that ties in with their respective artistry. Ulla Fries is a graphic artist, educated at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm and living in Uppsala. She is one of our most important graphic artists, working with an old technique: copperplate engraving. The work The Philosopher is one of the artist’s larger works. The technique is very precise and time consuming. Look carefully at all the small lines in the fur of the Philosopher; they are all engraved into the hard copperplate in order to later on be coloured in before the printing process.

Katinka Andersson is a young graphic artist who was attracted by the technique of using a photographic master to make graphic prints. Here is a whole installation with the shared theme of flowers; romantic, beautiful and with a youthful expression.

Anna Persson has studied at Valand School of Fine Arts, Gothenburg University, and she lives in Gothenburg. The video work 000218 was shot at the Fürstenberg Gallery at Goteborgs Konstmuseum, where the important turn-of-the-century artists can be found: Carl Larsson, Bruno Liljefors and Anders Zorn. In the background The Neck by Ernst Josephsson is clearly visible. Anna Persson is strongly influenced by the American video artist Bruce Nauman, who often is very physical in his works. He uses his body in different ways like a tool, in order to express what he wants to say.

Klara Kristalova was born 1967 and her family arrived in Sweden as refugees from Czechoslovakia in 1968. Klara Kristalova has been studying at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm, where she also lives. The work Cut Out For is made of bronze. It is a very dark image of something positive, a flower without petals and bulb. Klara Kristalova also likes to work in clay.

Anneè Olofsson was born in Skane in 1966, has studied at Olso Natioanl College of the Arts, and then for an additional year in New York, where she now lives. Anneè Olofsson works mostly with photography and video art. Her parents are usually participating in her works. The large colour photograph Ouch is modelled on an old work by a sculptor from the 17th century: Stefano Maderno who lived 1576-1636. He made a graveyard monument in marble for the canonized St Cecilia. The sculpture can be found in a church in Rome. The martyr St Cecilia was lowered into boiling water because she would not worship pagan gods. Anneè Olofsson has arranged her image fully after Maderno’s sculpture. The photograph is very dramatic with its black room, black bunk bed, and woman figure, dressed in black and drenched in water. The title of the work is of double meaning, as the word Aj (Swedish for Ouch) can represent pain but also the pronunciation of the English word I; it is the artist’s body we can see on the image. Anneè Olofsson’s work Ouch becomes an image of strong inner pain and the connection with the 17th century work strengthens the universality in human anxiety over the time she lives in.

Pressetext

GOOD BUY

mit Katinka Andersson, Sigurdur Gudmundsson, Christina Eriksson-Fredriksson / Christofer Fredriksson, Klara Kristalova, Annee Olofsson, Anna Persson, Sirpo Virtanen