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Additional information: The I Love Malmö exhibition in the gallery of contemporary art at Kumu Art Museum (5th floor).
The exhibition is open to the public from 11 September 2009 to 17 January 2010.
The current exhibition is the last stage in the Museums in Motion international cooperation programme involving Kumu, Turku and Malmö Art Museums. The first stage in 2008 brought to Kumu a remarkable art event from Finland – the Golden Age of Finnish Art exhibition compiled on the basis of Turku’s collections. Under the Red Flags, a display of socialist realism, was put together from works in the Art Museum of Estonia, and has been a public success in Turku as well as in Malmö.
I Love Malmö introduces the Malmö Art Museum collection, one of the largest and most remarkable in Sweden (outside Stockholm) primarily because of the museum’s policy of focusing on Nordic art. The exhibition was conceived, and the works selected, by Kumu curators Eha Komissarov and Maria-Kristiina Soomre, who sought the particularities of Nordic art through its more famous narratives. Kumu shows the work of 49 artists and groups, most of whom are internationally acclaimed and have significantly influenced the developments of contemporary art. According to the director of Malmö Art Museum, Göran Christenson, art in the Nordic countries has become international and therefore concepts such as ‘local’, ‘regional’ and ‘national’ are no longer apposite. This is also proved by the current exhibition in Kumu, which includes both Scandinavian and international art stars.
The exhibition is based on topics, with occasional classics from the national-romantic art in the Nordic countries at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The works of the great names in art history, such as Richard Bergh, Anders Zorn, August Strindberg and Vilhelm Hammershøi, primarily emphasise the remarkable survival of nature motifs, treatment of art and the traditions of psychological art, whereas the chosen works all seem topical and contemporary today. One of the pearls in the Malmö collections, the numerous drawings of Carl Fredrik Hill, is introduced as a special phenomenon.
Marking the openness of art life in the Nordic countries in the 1960s and 1970s and the role of Sweden in international art, Kumu also displays works by big international art names in the Malmö Art Museum collections, such as Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys and Edward Kienholz. The skilfully directed breakthrough in the 1990s and in the first decade of the 21st century, into leading positions of international art life, known as the Nordic Miracle, essentially continues the same success story, where the most prominent names – Olafur Eliasson, Annika von Hauswolff, Elmgreen & Dragset, Superflex and others – enjoy superstar status. They are accompanied by the world names in Malmö collections, such as Wolfgand Tillmans and Nan Goldin, and a number of rising stars of the new generation.
Kumu curators have structured the massive Nordic art narrative into a comprehensive exhibition, splitting it into subtopics. Besides the classics Zorn and Strindberg, Northern Light includes big names of contemporary art, e.g. Esko Männiko, Olafur Eliasson, Annika von Hausswolff and others, who are all fascinated with nature and nature motifs. Spatial Stagings tackles problems connected with the private sphere, psychological art and constructing gender roles in the art of Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nina Saunders, Elina Brotherus, Année Olafsson and others. Powerless Structures examines the relations between power and powerlessness through the prism of minimalist form in the work of the artist couple Elmgreen & Dragset, Joseph Beuys, Gardar Eide Einarsson and others. The thematic room Society of Pop brings together Andy Warhol, Edward Kienholz, the classic of Nordic pop art Öyvind Fahlström, and a number of artists playing with pop motives in recent art. The name Red Room was borrowed from literature, and examines the idiosyncrasy of one colour, testing its political as well as social shades: Sture Johannesson represents the 1960s Swedish hippie culture, Felix Gmelin analyses red as the colour of fighting, multimedia artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff uses red as the creator of meta-language expression. The tense association of three artworks puts a full stop to the exhibition in the room PS – Power Structures, where the new version of the Danish flag by the art group Superflex is supplemented by Bo Hultén’s two stuffed artworks, the Swedish Tiger and the Black Panther, commissioned by the Tax Board.
There is also an exhibition catalogue, containing texts by Sirje Helme, Göran Christenson, Marika Reuterswärd, Eha Komissarov and Maria-Kristiina Soomre. The catalogue was edited by Ellu Maar, designed by Jaanus Samma. Published by the Art Museum of Estonia.
An international seminar takes place on 9 October in Kumu auditorium, focusing on the role of contemporary art in Scandinavian cultural policies.
The exhibition displays works by the following artists:
August Strindberg, Anders Zorn, Martin Bigum, Esko Männikkö,Matts Leiderstam, Fredrik Svensson, Olafur Eliasson, Annika von Hausswolff, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Ernst Billgren, Ola Billgern, Marjaana Kella, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nan Goldin, Santeri Tuori, Anne Katrine Dolven, Nina Saunders, Richard Bergh, Année Olofsson, Elina Brotherus, Liisa Lounila, Joseph Beuys, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Elmgreen & Dragset, Cecilie Dahl, Niels Bonde, Bigert & Bergström, Carl Fredrik Hill, Lars Siltberg, Andy Warhol, Öyvind Fahlström, Dan Wolgers, Lisa Jonasson, Stig Sjölund, Edward Kienholz, Mari Slaattelid, Sture Johannesson, Felix Gmelin, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Hans Isaksson, Robert Lucander, Jussi Niva, Astrid Svangren, Jukka Korkeila, Lars Arrhenius, Magnus Thierfelder, Anders Sletvold Moe, Bo Hultén, Superflex
Exhibition curators: Eha Komissarov and Maria-Kristiina Soomre
Designers: Ralf Lõoke and Neeme Külm
Graphic design: Jaanus Samma
Supporters:
 
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views of the author alone, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.
Museums in Motion
Estonian Ministry of Culture
More information:
Maria-Kristiina Soomre
Tel: 602 6099, 5330 7719
maria-kristiina.soomre@ekm.ee
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