fbpx

22.02.04. Berg Gallery – Various artists

Berg Gallery – Various artists – Various artworks – January 13 to February 19, 2022 – Hudiksvallsgatan 8, Stockholm, Sweden

Open Tuesday – Friday 11.00 – 18.00, Saturday 12.00 – 16.00

ABOUT the artists

Tom Göran Tage Hedqvist, born February 29, 1948 in Stockholm, is a Swedish designer in mainly graphic form and textiles. Tom Hedqvist is the son of the artist Tage Hedqvist and the fashion illustrator Britta Hedqvist (1906–1972). He grew up at the Thiel Gallery in Stockholm, where his father had a studio and a home

Mårten Medbo, born March 20, 1964 in Järfälla, is a Swedish ceramicist and glass artist and Doctor of Arts and Crafts. Mårten Medbo studied at the Elementary School for Artistic Education 1985-1986, the glass and ceramics department at Konstfack in Stockholm 1986-92 and in interior design at Konstfack 1992- http://medbo.com/


ABOUT the exhibition
Ingela Håkansson Lamm is mainly known for her textile prints and pattern designs. In 1970, a group of ten artists and graphic designers came together and formed Ten Swedish Designers – an initiative aiming to redefine the concept of printed textiles. In addition to Håkansson Lamm, the group included names such as Carl Johan De Geer, Inez Svensson and Tom Hedqvist. As a group, they challenged the Swedish design norm with discreet patterns, creating eye-catching, expressive, and colorful textile prints that were initially considered both provocative and non-commercial.
In hindsight, the Ten Swedish Designers have indubitably made a significant impact on Swedish design and their textiles have been exhibited in New York, Tokyo, Paris, and Berlin, among other international cities. Eventually, Håkansson Lamm became the CEO of the brand and managed the Ten Swedish Designer’s store on Götgatan in Stockholm until 2015.


Håkansson Lamm’s body of work spans across the graphically abstract as well as the figurative – her textile prints display bright, vivid colors and a direct, symbolic imagery. The current exhibition covers a series of collages, created out of leftover pieces of material that have remained after her many years of designing patterns. The negative shape of a band-aid can be traced in one of the works. Here, the cut-out and torn pieces of paper form new abstract compositions, while at the same time referencing Håkansson Lamm’s earlier works.


Ingela Håkansson Lamm is educated at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, and co-founder of the designer collective Ten Swedish Designers. Together with the group, she has exhibited at, among others, Nationalmuseum, Millesgården and Röhsska Museet. A retrospective of her work was shown in 2020 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the critically acclaimed exhibition “Rooms, pictures, stripes”, a two-person show with her longtime colleague and friend, Tom Hedqvist. Håkansson Lamm has made several public appearances and is represented at Nationalmuseum, Röhsska Museet, Malmö Museer, and the Public Art Agency of Sweden.

Tom Hedqvist is known to many as one of Sweden’s foremost graphic designers and as a co-founder of the pioneering designer collective Ten Swedish Designers. A fascination for stripes has marked his work for decades.

This is how Tom Hedqvist describes the exhibition in his own words: “During the summer of 2020, the streets of Stockholm were still and empty, especially in the weekends. A warm Sunday afternoon, I noticed a signal flag in an open window across mine. Half yellow, half blue. I looked up the meaning of it – ‘I wish to communicate with you’. When I looked out the window again, the flag had disappeared, and it didn’t come back. Did I really see it, or did I just yearn for this message?”


In the midst of the pandemic, the event made a special impact and thus became the source of inspiration for a series of sketches influenced by the international maritime flag system. Since graphical signs attract our attention, the significance of the flag as a medium for communication and identity comes to mind. The works have a direct expression, whilst their message remains unknown.


Tom Hedqvist is educated at Beckmans College of Design and is a co-founder of the designer collective Ten Swedish Designers. He has previously been appointed as Professor of Graphical Design at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm (Konstfack), artistic director of Orrefors Glassworks, headmaster of Beckmans College of Design and museum director of Röhsska Museet in Gothenburg. His works have been exhibited at Nordiska museet, Waldemarsudde, Millsegården, Röhsska Museet and most recently in the two-person exhibition “Rooms, pictures, stripes”, also featuring works by Ingela Håkansson Lamm, at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2020. Tom Hedqvist is represented at Nationalmuseum, Nordiska museet, Röhsska Museet and Textilmuseet in Borås.

The exhibition lends its title from the natural sciences, where taxonomy aims to divide organisms into species and subspecies, determine their characteristics, and map out their dispersion. As one of the many legacies of the Enlightenment, taxonomy marks the birth of modern man.

While entering the exhibition space, the viewer is faced by systematically hung objects that seem to await examination, identification, and classification. Objects that seem to reside somewhere on the border between the recognizable and the foreign, the organic and the artificial. The shapes are spherical and abstract. Strange findings that testify to the human curiosity and desire to discover.


Mårten Medbo’s path into ceramics went via apprenticeship at a pottery. Throwing has always been central to his understanding of the ceramic field as well as his self-perception as an artist. Even though he early on his in career outruled the tradition of throwing as a part of his artistic practice, he constantly returned to the potter’s wheel – but “in secrecy”. As a doctoral student in the field of artistic research, he gained a new interest in his own relation to throwing. Attempting to re-evaluate the artistic potential of turning, Medbo set up a framework for his future practice: that thrown objects must serve as a constant element.


The themes explored in the exhibition are of epistemological nature. They’re about modern man’s self-perception and curiosity – but also about how this curiosity is expressed through a febrile search for and gathering of knowledge, with the ultimate goal of mastering the world for one’s own purposes. On a parallel level, the artist acts as the exploratory and curious man, but with a different purpose. The exploration is rather about what can be created within the given framework – and how the practice of throwing might be expressed.


In Taxonomy, gravity makes its presence felt – a factor that undeniably sets out certain limitations when it comes to man’s mastery of the world. Medbo’s way of working allows him to expose his objects to gravity in their plastic, unfired state. The objects are systematically hung up and allowed to hang so even during the glaze firing, which means that the glazes enhance the gravitational expression.


Mårten Medbo (f. 1964) is one of Sweden’s foremost ceramicist and the first Swede to reach a doctor’s level in crafts. He has earlier exhibited Christian Larsen/Larsen Warner in Stockholm, Galerie NeC in Paris, and Galleri Thomassen in Gothenburg. Medbo is represented at e.g. Nationalmuseum, Röhsska Museum, the Public Art Agency of Sweden, as well as in numerous private collections in Europe and USA.


ABOUT the gallery
Berg Gallery was founded in 2013 and is owned and operated by Niclas Berg. The gallery focuses on contemporary art and represents both established and emerging artists. The gallery has a special interest in material-based art. Berg Gallery is located in the Stockholm Gallery District near Vanadisplan in a 270 sqm space.https://www.berggallery.se/

Hudiksvallsgatan 8
SE-113 30 Stockholm

info@berggallery.se

OPENING HOURS
Tuesday – Friday 11.00 – 18.00
Saturday 12.00 – 16.00


Alex Colard’s Secret Exhibition – Thirty six paintings

Five two-meters handcrafted canvases, two large, five medium, six medium-small, nine small, nine extra small

Blog at WordPress.com.

%d bloggers like this: