Things are hanging on the walls. A sort of perfection in fiction and creativity is created in this shut down print workshop in Malmö when Carl Kostyál Gallery exhibits Erika Hellmans collection of art.
Haley Josephs, The Beginning (2018) Oil on linen, 183 x 122 cm Photo: Graziella Loyrette
Exhibition Carl Kostyál Gallery presents Malmö Sessions Venue: Ystadvägen 22 19 May – 16 June 2019
It is satisfying and relaxing to walk around in this selection of artworks from almost 50 artists. They do not communicate with each other. But as a collective they talk loud. They are art. They are contemporary art.
London based Carl Kostyál Gallery has previously made large art exhibitions in Stockholm in collaboration with collector Erika Hellman. For over a decade Erika Hellman has been working with Carl Kostyál to build a huge collection of art from international and young artists. Now we get to take part of the collection in Malmö.
Haley Josephs portrays a feminine pose in blue workwear in front of a dreamlike pink sunset. I like these colours. But work is rarely performed like this today. We don’t work with our bodies like this anymore. Mostly it feels like we are working infront of a computer.
I feel tired. I’m not impressed about what art is, in this case. Art is talking about life as it wasn’t happening right now. As it is always a memory from something in the past, a reflective mode. Where is the interactivity? Aliveness, live actions, happenings. We are not in the 60’s anymore. We are right now in a constant documentation-mode leading us in to the state where what we are doing right in this very moment is already history. It’s a quite satisfying feeling.
Austin Lee, Sun with Sunglasses (2019) Cast aluminium, car paint, 200 x 141 x 83 cm Photo: Graziella Loyrette
Sun with Sunglasses (2019) by Austin Lee looks like something modeled with a 3D software, some sort of quick sketch on a computer. But its crafted in aluminium.
This is a big collection and a narrow selection of artworks portraying our digital time through analogue and craft techniques.
Participanting artists: Zachary Armstrong, Gina Beavers, Ellen Berkenblit, Anna Bjerger, Alfred Boman, Petra Cortright,Canyon Castator, Sara Cwynar, Alex Da Corte, Maja Djordjevic, Buck Ellison, Oli Epp, Travis Fish, Gerasimos Floratos, Al Freeman, Alex Gardner, Aaron Graham, Justin John Greene, Henry Gunderson, Haley Josephs, Cheyenne Julien,Ilja Karilampi, Jordan Kasey, Botond Keresztesi, Basil Kincaid, Absalon Kirkeby, Hilma af Klint, James English Leary, Jason Matthew Lee, Austin Lee, Éva Mag, Stephen McClintock, Joel Mesler, Jill Mulleady, Robert Nava, Karl Norin, Oliver Osborne, Matthew Palladino, Jon Rafman, Loup Sarion, Ben Spiers, Constance Tenvik, Jim Thorell, Jake Troyli, James Ulmer, Austyn Weiner, Cameron Welch and Chloe Wise.
Vilma Fredriksson – I badrummet. Installation. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
It’s impossible to not find yourself slightly overwhelmed when 18 participants from Konstskolan Munka presents their work together in the exhibition Allt är obligatoriskt at Skånes Konstförening.
Exhibition Participants: Käbi Apelgren Backlöf, Johanna Bjuremo, Mia Ekman, Fanny Fahrman, Vilma Fredriksson, Klara Hedin, Yrsa Hedström, Gustav Kathirgamer, Nina Johansson, Jinling Li, Fouad Mahammadie, Ralph Noack, Sara Poppler Carredano, Anna Svedberg, Catja Tonberg, Saga von Stedingk, Jonna Wäreby och Rasmus Östlund. Venue: Skånes konstförening, Malmö 3-12 May 2019
Vilma Fredriksson – I badrummet. Installation. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
In a small room I find the installation I badrummet by Vilma Fredriksson. The interior is created from soft and reshapeable foam instead of hard ceramics. Arms and head of the character living in that space are shaped in hardened clay instead of inconstant muscles and flesh. The face is fixated in a tired expression. Still it performs so vividly and alive when it is moved through a hand underneath its carefully knitted cute sweater. I’m in love with those shoes by the way. I recognise myself in my bathroom, starring at my face in the mirror.
Vilma Fredriksson – I badrummet. Installation. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
Psychoanalytic theory “the mirror stage” invented by Jacques Lacan describes how we in a specific moment in our development as humans realise ourselves as objects. A moment where we are starting to grasp the complicated connection between the self and others, evoking feelings of my body to only be existing in relation to someone perceiving me. Perhaps this is one reason to why a bathroom without a mirror feels like a frightening place to me.
Perhaps it is inescapable being watched. Is it then possible being an artist without some sort of exposition? In this exhibition 18 artists are exposed and today I’m happy it’s obligatory.
Jaktlaget a loaded hunting performance. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
Silent communication between hunters in the woods. We look, we nod, we use our equipment in this loaded moment when we are invited to join the slightly interactive performance Jaktlaget.
Performance Jaktlaget with and by: Olof Runsten, Patrik Patsy Lassbo, Milja Rossi and Annika Tosti.
Entrance in front of the light beams of a car. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
Two camouflaged hunters are giving us advice through dark modified voices: Don’t speak to them, take care of each other and only photos with flash are allowed, but they are really, really allowed.
I instantly take a photo of them, with flash turned on. Sharp knifes stabbing a hole in a big plastic bag, I expect some dead animal. But, what’s in there is my outfit for this evening (or morning) ritual.
In the forest coffee is served. Through the familiar taste I feel a bit more relaxed.
Jaktlaget presents a silent communication between hunters in the woods. Not mainly because you are there to hunt, but because this is the way we communicate in this game. We look, nod to each other, use our equipment and sit close together. We are waiting close to each other. Being fysicaly quite close is enough for our thrill. This is what’s it’s all about, this slow but yet so power loaded moment of expectation is the most intense moment in the hunting practice.
The magazine Sexy Mountain. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
Moving slowly. Sharp knifes. Hidden faces. The darkness. The forest. Theres this erotic touch to the situation, especially when the magazine Sexy Mountain is introduced. The paper is thrown on the floor in the dirty woods for us to read in the light beams of a car.
Simona Dumitriu and Tawanda Appiah in conversation. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
In that yellow light the cables on the floor are carefully mounted. This is a place to listen, this is a place to dance, this is a place to talk.
Conversation Who are you? Are you a name and a space? a conversation with Tawanda Appiah and Simona Dumitriu.
Venue: Skånes Konstförening
Simona Dumitriu. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
Who are you? Are you a name and a space? We are gathered around a vinyl record player in the middle of the room. The yellow light in the room covers our stories with a historic shimmer.
Tawanda Appiah and Simona Dumitriu invites us to take part of the curatorial conversation around the exhibition “The appearance and disappearance of futures and pasts”. Listening, talking and playing music.
Sound is brought up as an instant and powerful tool to express identity and culture that can be replayed in future new environments. A politic tool against colonisation. A social tool to reunite. A historic recordable movement sounding from the pasts in to the futures. Appearing and disappearing, some sounds are in some times and places impossible to find.
Tawanda Appiah. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
Individual perspectives are shared by Simona Dumitriu and Tawanda Appiah around personal and collective life stories connected to and constructed through music. Music as something joyful, music against oppression, music as a gathering.
Christopher Füllemann presents Useless Romance - (It's All About Seduction and Death) at Galleri CC in Malmö
Liquid feeling (2017) – Christopher Füllemann. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
A vibrant and glowing, not always just funny comic-style, green silicone towel walkthrough when Christopher Füllemann presents Useless Romance – (It’s All About Seduction and Death) at Galleri CC in Malmö.
Art exhibition Useless Romance – (It’s All About Seduction and Death) with Christopher Füllemann at Galleri CC.
Curator: Sofia Wickman Venue: Galleri CC Exhibition date: February 26 – March 26 2019
Whispering The Secrets Of The Earth (2018) – Christopher Füllemann. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
Walking down to the Galleri CC dark room I’m a bit nervous this time. It could be anything down there.
This fleshy pink limb.
Hanging there.
Or actually it’s crawling around. I can feel its strength. It takes some muscles to keep in that position for a while.
The light is glowing so vibrant I immediately fall down in fantasies.
All My Boyfriends Dicks (2018) – Christopher Füllemann. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
Walking through the wormy silicone curtains All My Boyfriends Dicks (2018) in to another room they get stuck in my face. I want to try this walkthrough a couple of times.
I notice a dropped-skin-shaped-flesh-textured… Swing!
The black chains melts in to my own old rubber ball tempting feelings. Someone entering the slaughter room now. Is it me or them who’s gonna get slayed in that swing I find myself fantasise about for a while.
I walk through All My Boyfriends Dicks (2018) again. Who gave me permission to touch them?
Touch them again and again.
They are soft.
If I just touch them a little they move by themselves for a while in unpredicted movements.
Later, putting my green silicone towel over the handrails down to the pool my comic-style round simplified feet stand straddle-legged ready to jump in while theres a huge amount of organic resin blood forming another sort of pool on the floor. Did I finally also get my period or was I hurt in some way?
Silent by Pauline Boudry and Renare Lorentz. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
You’ve never seen the lonely me at all is a search of queer life stories in Central and Eastern Europe. It’s intimate and personal both as separate works and as a collective gathering of knowledge of life- and survivalstyles.
Art exhibition You’ve never seen the lonely me at all with Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Anna Daučíková, Mi Kafchin, Mária Takács, Mima Simić and Marta Šušak, Ines Lukač, Teri Szűcs and Maja Pan, Valentina Iancu.
Curator: Simona Dumitriu Venue: Skånes Konstförening. Exhibition date: February 1 – March 3 2019
I get to choose if I want to take my shoes of or use plastic covers. What would my shoes look like in plastic covers I wonder. And of course my answer is always to be barefoot when I get the opportunity. I’m entering the video work Silent by Pauline Boudry and Renare Lorentz with performer Aérea Negrot
In the white textile covered room I’m embraced with powerful will to express a beautiful resistance I couldn’t feel in the Malmö streets earlier today. Sitting here in my not-that-glamorous winter jacket I feel under-dressed. Longing for sequins in the summer streets. Soft white fabric under my feet, I want to roll around in there. Those benches are made not to be seated on I think.
After the long intro in the video, I love long silent intros, when she starts singing and the beat comes on I’m already seated on the floor. I release my jacket. Can I stay for the whole day? It’s soft refreshing and warm. Remember how I yesterday thought about how it was a long time since i experienced art that I really enjoyed. I’m alone in here. And this experience is for me. This is why art became my sort of non-political politics, non-religious religion. I wish I could come here for relaxation every day. Being able to believe in abilities to protest against everything evil and boring through singing to yourself with headphones on the streets.
A glamorous non-glamorous intro. Silent by Pauline Boudry and Renare Lorentz. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
The video loop is annoying me a little, why couldn’t it just last forever in some way? But I guess then you would lose that impressing moment of a glamorous non-glamorous intro when the white wall falls down behind you and you find yourself standing on a non-stage street stage.
Drawings by Mi Kafchin. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
Reproduced drawings by Mi Kafchin on the walls. I couldn’t handle the manual slide projector. Theres people who know how this works, people existed in times before my time. Documentary Secret Years directed by Mária Takács, 2009, healing history gaps about queer people in East and central Europe. And a glimpse of beautiful images from the video Portrait of a Woman with Institution by Anna Anna Daučíková presented in a small institutional two person office chair room.
There’s a hovering atmosphere of power exchange at Galleri Format in Malmö when Santiago Mostyn presents the exhibition How Important is Speed in a Revolution?
Art exhibition How Important is Speed in a Revolution? by Santiago Mostyn.
Venue: Galleri Format, Malmö Exhibition date: January 11 – February 24 2019
The sound fills the whole exhibition space. The beach filled with people starring at me, the camera taking a picture of the people. Slightly scary amplified sounds. Santiago Mostyn is used to putting oneself at centre of the artworks in ways that emphasises cultural otherness.
Beach Arrests, Santiago Mostyn. Photo: Galleri Format
The colours, warm sand, blue sky, clear water, ocher, earth, nature, dry plants. Lonely observing. Just as the sea, it’s just there. The police, arresting two topless black men.
Walking around a dubbel sided projection I’m observing still street life. Am I a tourist? Drums from an orchestra fades into the sound of the sea. I find myself rowing a boat.
Last time I saw works by Santiago Mostyn I was witnessing an uncomfortable interaction with the street life at Stureplan in Stockholm where images were composed to hard and rhythmic beats. Now the artist rows across the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey to Greece. These works are quite slower in pace. The beauty is not in the beat in that sense. But I can feel the same hovering atmosphere of power conditions.
It scares me that I think of vacation when I look at these images, realising this is a journey that have taken many lives. This remake of a journey of many asylum seekers is peaceful and beautiful.
What do you work with? It is often one of the first things we ask when we want to get to know each other. Drömjobb is a dance performance that in abstract ways shows that jobs mean so much more than what we do to get money.
Drömjobb makes comparisons between work and playfulness to visualise forward movements, development and construction of a team. It’s seriously funny for all ages. We get to see the colourful characters on stage enter different kinds of roles where some play leaders, some are controllers and some execute what is needed to be done.
Playful, serious and poetic. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
What do they actually work with? For many of us, it is becoming increasingly difficult to answer that question, professions and tasks are becoming more and more diffuse. But, when the work is done together, a nice and strong team spirit and affinity is created just in that moment. In Drömjobb we get to take part in the work through a keyboard workout followed by a collective relaxation.
Drömjobb visualises what it means having something sensible to do. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
In a poetic and humorous way Drömjobb pinpoints how huge parts of our everyday lives revolve around actually having something sensible to do. We work with ourselves, with our relationships to other people and we work to keep moving forward.
Strangers is an abstract blackbox larp by Nina Runa Essendrop. Divided in to two groups, separated with a tape border we create small societies with our own rules. What happens when a member from the other side is put in to our group?
Nina Runa Essendrop – Strangers. Blackbox larp. Photo: Peter Munthe-Kaas
Take off your shoes before you enter the black box, we are told. Artist and larp designer Nina Runa Essendrop is warm and welcoming. Most of us are new to this. We are soon divided in to two groups separated with a tape border. Through instructions we are developing a choreographic work together. I aim for getting better, evolving as a group into a complicated structure. Establishing a tiny world of rules and realities. I love this, creating something useless but yet so meaningful with our bodies together. Through gaze, touches, hands, smiles, feelings and silent comprehensions we are now organized in sync.
There is friction and insinuation to hierarchies between us but all this contributes to a familiar feeling of belonging together. I am surprised when the first member from the other side suddenly appears at my work station. I do not interrupt my choreography, no way, I ignore this obstacle and put myself in front of them. There is no room to be polite in this situation, my occupation comes first. If I interrupt this now the magic is gone, I would loose the strong connection to the ensemble. What happens now is up to the group.
Nina Runa Essendrop – Strangers. Blackbox larp. Photo: Peter Munthe-Kaas
Blackbox larps are live action role-playing games performed in a blackbox, a room with black walls and no windows where theatrical sound and light equipment can be used. The room also enhances stylised movements and expressions, bodies and objects put in to this room really matter, theres not much else to look at. We are guided on stage, the theatrical room, the light and the music takes me in to performance mode. The 4 hour long experience includes a warm up, developing period with break and a debrief afterwards where we get to discuss our experiences. Strangers was presented at Inter Arts Center in Malmö during Blackbox Sessions, a seminar exploring larp design and VR storytelling.
Worldtrotters™ offers travels in VR. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
From relaxing desert islands to cabin crew karaoke, Mixed Reality Fitness to cruises at sunrise; Worldtrotters™ brings you the finest sights and adventures the virtual world has to offer. In collaboration with Platform residency Worldtrotters™ is happy to present 5 brand new exiting travels.
Worldtrotters™ is a corporate group of fictive travel companies offering travels in VR. In a time where traveling is easier than ever before the distance between humans in social atmospheres still seem to be growing. Sun Times News met the staff behind Sun Trip Resorts and Dream Trip Travels to talk more about virtual traveling.
Several alter egos were created to find a solution to the feeling of not being able to do all by ourselves, says Johan Lundin. Even some alter egos working at Gallery Extra were created. Whenever something new was needed to be done we just created an alter ego who was perfect for the task. This gave us a lot of safety and time to be able to explore and enjoy the beautiful beaches in Vaasa.
Important artist alter egos to mention are definitely Kylie Skyler, an experimental VR artist who created all VR-worlds. Carol Darwin, a pastel realism ceramic artist who created the doll sculptures in the Adventure Airlines event. Jayden River who produced some amazing vibrant wall mounted architectural ceramic AR-sculptures and Sonique Temper, 3d model photographer who did some AR-prints that never really worked out.
Dream Trip Travels staff at Kasern 13, former military residence, in Vasa. Photo: Graziella Loyrette
We have great expectations for all these fictive artists to collaborate in the future, says Adelaine Cort, VR publisher at Gallery Extra. One of the reasons we selected these artist to work with is our interest in integrating physical materials in VR-artworks.
The night after I published Airplane Singalong for approval in Oculus Store I woke up from a nightmare, says Adelaine. I was dreaming that I got a response from Oculus staff telling us our VR-app was unapproved, in my dream they wrote clearly: ”I don’t get all this unnecessary VR that just confuse people. Maybe you should publish it somewhere else? By the way you really should consider recomposing the music.” I told Kylie (Kylie Skyler, VR-artist) this and they where laughing. But I guess there was some sort of serious doubt in it because the next VR-word created was Intentional Beach Camp which actually had som sort of functionality in it that reminded of a game. You find yourself navigating a sunscreen lotion tube traveling through hoops and other objects at a beach while a creative interpretation of the essay Notes on ’Camp’ by Susan Sontag is being red up. Every time you score a hoop you hear the word ’Yes’.
Dream Trip Travels serving 3-course dinner during Artistic Dinner Evening in Vasa. Photo: Sten Snickars
Geting an audience to visit our events was quite though says Sidney Horst, Gallery Extra alter-ego staff working with PR and invitations. We always send out a lot of personal invitations to artists, institutions, organisations, politicians, and cultural workers as well as neighbours and local audience who could have an interest in visiting our events. For the Artistic Dinner Evening I was actually putting some paper invitations in private mailboxes, which we not normally do, and it gave us a fantastic mix of travellers.
There is complexity involved with producing performance when you neither have a stage or an audience, a great solution to this was found through the Mixed Reality Fitness and Wild West events that was intimate and privately organised outdoors close to Wasalandia and Sockerfabriken
Its tickling. Seeing the truth, the real world in the real world in a way. In here, Theres nothing more unrealistic than the fact that you wouldn’t be able to change. Lets think of the artificial as relaxing. The fictive, created surface makes me think of how our surroundings are constructed and how we are continuously constructing our reality through our choices.
Travel Safety Advice The safety of Worldtrotters™ travellers is important. Worldtrotters™ travels has an ironic and att the same time serious tone. The travels are not laughing about what they are portraying, they are honouring it. Honouring it in a way that is making room for even more and even broader expressions for you to float around in. This is a property for queer, female, male, transgender, non-conforming, Femme, nonbinary and extra experiences. Refuze of categorisation. Realizations, distinct feelings, invisible wishes, loud expressions, live drag. Glitchgender, Pangender, Multigender, Intergender, Girlflux, Genderqueer, Genderpunk, Gender neutral, Genderfluid, Egogender, Femgender, Colorgender. Indescribable urges, androgyne ideals, camp costumes, amateur roles. Cisgender, Boyflux, Bigender, Autogender, Agender. In infinity of combination. Extra ladies, Extra gentlemen, Extra boys, Extra girls. Extra identities.
