Bongorama Stockholm

Hotel of the week: the Lydmar, Stockholm

2009-06-29T22:23:00.001-07:00

Chic yet homely, the Lydmar showcases the best of Stockholm itself - a perfect marriage between sleek, modernist design and classic elegance

Like Stockholm itself, the Lydmar maintains a perfect balance of classic and modern virtues, says Tim Walker in the Independent.

After a recent move, it is housed in an elegant 19th-century building beside the National Museum, with fine views over the water to the city's old town; the interior design is both "chic" and "homely".

The rooms are havens of peace and privacy - sound-proofed, individually furnished and very large - while the vibrant bar is a great place to mingle and meet new people. The restaurant completes the picture, with both "excellent seafood" and "mean cheese-burgers" on the menu.

Doubles from £197 per night incl. breakfast. Contact: +46 8 22 31 60.

Carin Ellberg @ Andrehn-Schiptjenko

2009-02-18T13:06:00.000-08:00

Following the landscape. Andréhn-Schiptjenko is pleased to present Carin Ellberg’s new solo Following the landscape (sketch above). The exhibition is Carin Ellberg’s fifth at the gallery and the opening takes place on Thursday, January 15th 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. in the joint opening of all the Norrtull galleries.

The point of departure of Carin Ellberg’s art is often waywardly constructed pictorial worlds, sometimes with motifs found in the home and the worlds of imagination of children. Her artistry is characterized by a unique exploration of not only shapes and ideas, but also of disparate materials such as coffee, silicone, tights and clothes. Her process is a flow of ideas and thoughts in an ongoing and unfinished transformation, and the “landscape” in the title can be interpreted as both a classical landscape, a pop cultural media landscape and as a mental flow of associations, where the obvious and the unconscious merge and where meanings and ideas are felt but are continually unreachable.

The exhibition consists of paintings as well as sculptures, which interact in a site specific installation. The paintings are transformed into sculptural objects occupying the room and approaching the sculptures. The walls are transformed into something else; it is unclear into what, a new wall, a painting, sculpture or an installation.

During the last years, Carin Ellberg has had solo shows at Verkligheten, Umeå, Sweden, Aka Institute of Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia and at the gallery Ileana Tounta, Athens, Greece and has participated in group shows at the Swedish museums Alma Löv museum, Östra Ämtervik, Malmö Konstmuseum, Mjellby konstmuseum, Kulturhuset Stockholm, and at the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2005 she was awarded the sculpture prize Stora Skulpturpriset by Friends of Moderna Museet.

Please contact the gallery for more information and images. The exhibition runs through February 15th. The gallery is open Tuesday-Friday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday 12 noon - 4 p.m.

***

Lars Nilsson @ Milliken Gallery

2009-02-16T11:27:00.000-08:00

Lee Ronaldo @ Magasin 3

2009-02-16T11:24:00.000-08:00

"iloveyouihateyou"
LEAH SINGER & LEE RANALDO
Gordon Matta-Clark, Terry Fox, Nancy Holt & Robert Smithson
7 FEBRUARI – 24 MAJ 2009

Half of what we do is to create little sparks that spur contemplation. If the work allows for that thoughtful contemplation when you’re sitting and letting this thing wash over you and if it’s triggering certain thoughts, just allow your mind to drift with it.

Lee Ranaldo, from the catalogue.

For more than a decade, the poet and musician Lee Ranaldo and the artist Leah Singer have been collaborating in multimedia performances. Lee Ranaldo is a founding member of Sonic Youth, Leah Singer is an artist, with film as her primary medium.

The exhibition "iloveyouihateyou" at Magasin 3 is based on an audiovisual work by Leah Singer and Lee Ranaldo. This work is an exploration of how image and sound interact, and will be staged both as a live performance and as an installation. Their performance work and installations combine a flow of images and sounds taken from everyday situations, moments that reveal the beauty of the ordinary and turn the commonplace into something extraordinary.

The exhibition also features three historic experimental films on the theme of “everyday existence” and the capacity to see the greatness in small things. The films are by Gordon Matta-Clark, Terry Fox, Nancy Holt & Robert Smithson.

Curator: Richard Julin

***

Gunilla Klingberg @ Bonniers Konsthall

2009-02-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

In spring 2009, Bonniers Konsthall presents a solo exhibition with Gunilla Klingberg, this year’s guest artist at Bonniers Konsthall. The exhibition will be the first major presentation of Klingberg’s work in Sweden. For the exhibition Klingberg has both created new works and re-developed older pieces in response to the space at the Konsthall - everything from sculptures and installations to wall paintings and projections.

Combining pattern images with sculptures and sound pieces, Gunilla Klingberg is perhaps best known for her characteristic patterns of recycled cut-price supermarket logotypes. The modest and mundane logotypes of Sparlivs and Lidl are transformed into seductively beautiful oriental patterns, while the logotype of Spar forms the foundation for a kaleidoscopic animation. In her work Brand New View, which covers 700 square metres of the Bonniers Konsthall’s glass façade, some ten different logotypes are interwoven into an entirely new design. The main gallery hosts Klingberg’s monumental installation Cosmic Matter. Composed of high scaffolding, tape and dreamcatchers, the work’s starting-point is the moon – both as a mythological symbol and as desirable booty for multinational companies.

Gunilla Klingberg is interested in contemporary consumer culture. Employing topical visual expressions, she juxtaposes consumerism with spirituality, low-budget design with Eastern imagery. By combining disparate features, she creates new meanings and new meetings between cultures, forms of expression and traditions.

By inviting a guest artist every year, Bonniers Konsthall enables the creation of new works. The artist is offered the opportunity to work on site in our guest studio and produce exhibitions exclusively for Bonniers Konsthall. Previous guest artists include Michael Beutler (2008), Monica Bonvicini (2007) and Gabriel Lester (2006).

Gunilla Klingberg
11 February - 12 April 2009

***

Tabaimo @ Moderna Museet

2009-02-16T11:20:00.001-08:00

Moderna Museet Now: Tabaimo

31 January - 19 April 2009

Curator: Lena Essling

Japanese artist Tabaimo has won acclaim for her captivating and sometimes disturbing animations. Her art is a merger of social satire and personal experiences. She primarily works with video installations, where the films are projected in a demarcated space, part room, part stage, which invites viewers to participate in and contribute to the work.

Tabaimo, or Ayako Tabata, was born 1975 in Hyogo, Japan, and is currently based in Nagano. Since her graduation from the Kyoto University of Art and Design in 1999 she has been featured in a large number of solo or group exhibitions. She participated in the triennial in Yokohama in 2001, and the biennials in Valencia in 2001, Sao Paulo in 2002 and Venice in 2007. She was first introduced to a Swedish audience in 2006 with the dance and video piece FURO by Tabaimo and choreographer Ohad Naharin, which had its first performance at The Jewish Theatre in Stockholm.

About the exhibition

Tabaimo about the exhibition
About the artist

Book a guided tour

Films chosen by Tabaimo

On Feb 3rd two films by Keiichi Tanaami and Shuji Terayama will be shown in the Cinema at 6 pm. This is the first event in a new film programme in connection with current exhibitions. Introdcution by curator Catrin Lundqvist. Admission free.

Hotel Rival

2007-10-23T01:22:00.000-07:00

Widely hailed as Stockholm’s first boutique hotel, the newly rehabilitated Hotel Rival is in the heart of the hip Södermalm district and comes complete with an entertaining pop culture connection in the person of owner Benny Andersson, of ABBA fame. Some say Andersson is the reason the Rival has been such a hit with visiting pop stars and the like, while others more soberly point to the thoughtful and extensive facilities, as well as the comfortable and accessibly stylish Art Deco décor—as attractive as you’d expect from Stockholm, with nothing cold or formalist about it.

Not every hotel has its own cinema—certainly the big chain hotels don’t—and very few have not just a bistro and a charming little café but an on-site bakery as well. The cinema is something of a theme here; the bistro’s walls are papered with a mosaic of nearly a thousand portraits of international film stars, and over each bed hangs an enlargement of a frame from a Swedish cinema classic (or, in some cases, ABBA: The Movie). 32” flat-screen televisions are standard, and the hotel’s extensive and well-curated DVD library replaces the usual pay-per-view arrangement.

The Södermalm island location is convenient and picturesque, right on the Mariatorget square, and the neighborhood adds a number of dining and entertainment options to the Rival’s already overstuffed list. The Rival is a social hub, something every boutique hotel with a bar aspires to, and though the bustle is enjoyable you don’t have to worry about being crowded out, as one of the two hotel bars is set aside for guests.

Hotel Rival

* Mariatorget 3, Box 175 25
* Stockholm, Sweden
*
* 99 Rooms

***

Oddsters Total @ Marie Laveau feat., DJ Frederik Bjerregaard

2007-10-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

Beirut Cafe

2007-06-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

There aren't too many Lebanese restaurants around Stockholm. The ambience is soothing, with lamps and a beautiful indoor waterfall. Bright coloured cloths give this place an exotic look. Eastern tradition suggests that many small dishes called 'Meze' form a larger plate. As portions in the main course are large, feel free to adapt the Meze Method. The cafe is unique in its selection of music, which has elements of oriental, balearic and lounge music. To sum it up, the place has a great feel to it and the food is delicious.

Beirut Cafe
Engelbrektsgatan 37
Stockholm 114 32 Sweden
+46 8 21 2025
info@beirutcafe.se
Open Hours
5p-midnight Mon-Thu, 5p-1a Fri-Sat, 5p-midnight Sun

Robert Rauschenberg @ Moderne Museet

2007-03-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

Robert Rauschenberg: Combines is perhaps the most important solo exhibition of this artist’s works ever to be shown. The works are best described as free-standing or wall-mounted objects combining painting and sculpture, produced between 1954 and 1964, a prolific period in Rauschenberg’s long and outstanding oeuvre. Rauschenberg was boundless in his choice of materials, combining newspaper cuttings and photographs, like the cubists, dadaists and surrealists, with objects found on his own rubbish dump – of which Coca-Cola bottles, pinups, rubber tyres and stuffed animals are but a few examples.

It is no exaggeration to say that Rauschenberg redefined American art when he invented the Combine. With these works he exploded the traditional boundary between painting and sculpture, and instead brought the street into the studio. Rauschenberg resumed the dialogue with the outer world that the preceding artist generation, the abstract expressionists, had consistently excluded from their art. The 162 combines he created during a ten-year period also demonstrate his influence on later isms and genres, such as pop art, neo-dada, assemblage, fluxus, Viennese actionism, arte povera and performance art.

Robert Rauschenberg (originally Milton) was born in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1925. After studying pharmacology at the University of Texas he was drafted into the Navy and spent many years caring for mental patients at various Navy hospitals in California. He started painting portraits of his fellow navy recruits that they could send back home to their families. In the late 1940s, he studied at Kansas City Art Institute and at Académie Julian in Paris, where he met the artist Susan Weil, whom he married shortly after. Rauschenberg went on to study at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where the famous artist and Bauhaus teacher Joseph Albers was on the staff. It was at Black Mountain that Rauschenberg forged his seminal friendship with the avant-garde choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham and the legendary composers John Cage and David Tudor. It was there, also, that he participated in Cage’s Theater Piece #1 which is now considered to be the world’s first happening. Robert Rauschenberg currently lives in Captiva in Florida.

Spencer Finch @ Brandstrom & Sten

2007-03-02T04:11:00.000-08:00

Brändström & Stene gallery, run by Andreas Brändström and Jan Stene, focuses on work by young and contemporary artists.

The gallery opened in 1993 and has exhibited artists such as Isaac Julien, Olafur Eliasson, Tracey Emin, Spencer Finch, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Jeppe Hein, Henrik Håkansson, Clay Ketter, Jim Shaw, Sam Taylor Wood, Cory Arcangel, Marnie Weber and Elin Wickström.

The goal of the gallery is to support Scandinavian artists in the international arena and to present international art to the Scandinavian market.

Since 1994 the gallery has participated in numerous international art fairs, including Art Basel, Art Chicago, Art Cologne, Art Forum Berlin and The Armory NYC. In addition, Brändström & Stene Gallery was one of the founders of the highly Smart Show Art Fair in Stockholm in the 1990s.

The gallery is situated in central Stockholm and occupies 500 square meters of exhibition space.

Brändström & Stene
Hudiksvallsgatan 6
S-113 30 Stockholm
Sweden

Phone:
Fax:

Present exhibitions
Spencer Finch
New Works
I fokus…
Ylva Ogland
Sisela & Ylva
March 1 – April 8

Opening hours
Thu-Fri 12.00-18.00
Sat-Sun 12.00-16.00

Supermarket 2007

2007-02-19T05:48:00.000-08:00

SUPERMARKET is a newly established and independent art fair in Stockholm.

SUPERMARKET art fair is a collaborative effort between artist-run spaces and organisations in Stockholm. Our objective is to create a dynamic and a free-flowing meeting place for artistic experimentation and initiative.
SUPERMARKET is a parallel event to Market, an art fair including some of the most well established galleries in the Nordic region.
In 2007 the SUPERMARKET concept will evolve into an international art fair for artist-run spaces and organisations. It will be a tight fitting, bustling, and upbeat social event.

SUPERMARKET art fair 2007 takes place in February 22-25 at Konstnärshuset (The Artists’ House), an old Art Deco palace in the centre of Stockholm.

For further information on the project please contact:
Pontus Raud, email: pontus@konstnarshuset.com, mobile: +46 739 99 34 29

Monica Bonvicini @ Bonniers Konsthall

2007-02-15T02:44:00.000-08:00

What does your wife think of your rough and dry hands?

The main exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall this spring features Italian artist Monica Bonvicini. Bonvicini, who is based in Berlin, is one of her generation’s most acclaimed artists, and the exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall is the first major presentation

Monica Bonvicini’s art explores the experience of space and architecture. Her large-scale installations and sculptures, which often use the art institution’s own architecture, critically addresses the western architectural tradition to reveal how a culture’s values infuse every last building block of its construction.

Thematically, Bonivicini works within a tradition in contemporary art where artists question the idea of perception within the exhibition space as well as in art history. She often uses industrial materials like glass, metal, and chains in her works, exploring and redefining their functions. One of the most distinct characteristics of her art is its physical concreteness, and the way it violently addresses and directly influences the observers’ experience of the room.

The exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall shows several of Monica Bonvicini’s prominent works from her production since the 1990’s and up to today. Her floor-piece Plastered will cover a large part of the konsthall. The ongoing work What does your wife/girlfriend think of your rough and dry hands? is exhibited in its totality, with additional questionnaires filled out in Stockholm. It is a series of questionnaires that has been distributed to hundreds of construction workers in different countries. The questionnaires have challenging questions such as “What is so appealing about construction workers?” or “Whom would you like to wall up?” Bonvicini uses aggression and humor to make us ponder how architecture and buildings are connected to sexuality and power. The exhibition also features a series of Monica Bonvicini’s later works, like the text-based large scale sculpture Not For You, one of her double swings, and a screen-print drawing on safety glass.

With solo exhibitions at respected institutions around the world, like Kunstwerke in Berlin, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Wiener Seccesion in Vienna, and The Sculpture Center in New York, Monica Bonvicini has established herself on the international art scene. She participates frequently in biennials all over the world, and she received the Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art, one of Europe’s most prestigious art awards, in 2005. Bonvicini is represented by Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan - West of Rome Inc., Los Angeles.

A catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.

Bonniers Konsthall
15 Feb - 29 Apr 2007

Sally Mann @ Kulturhuset Stockholm

2007-02-03T14:23:00.000-08:00

Mythically exquisite and intimate visual worlds

Sally Mann is one of the most acclaimed photographers of our time, thanks to her personal choice of subjects and the way she stretches the boundaries for the photographic processes. Today, when more and more photographers and photo-based artists are working with new digital technology, she goes back to the origins of photography and develops its potential in new visual worlds.

Naked and personal portrayals

This exhibition focuses on three of Sally Mann’s art projects, starting with her breakthrough as an artist, the photographic suite “Immediate Family” (1992), in which she portrays her children in an intimate and naked manner. Next are her mythical landscapes, “Deep South” from 1997, and the exhibition ends with her controversial portraits of her now grown-up children, in the project “What Remains”, from 2003.

Her debut shocked the American public

Few, if any, have experience such success with a debut project as Sally Mann with “Immediate Family”, photographs of her children, Emmett, Jessie and Virginia, captured with a large-format camera in intimate family situations, with and without clothes, sometimes grubby or with grazes. Many Americans felt that these child portraits were shocking and too exposing. The criticism from politicians and the church contributed to the publicity, and Sally Mann grew famous as an artist.

Southern landscapes

Her exhibition “Mother Land” in New York in 1997 was the starting-point of a new chapter in her career. Sally Mann sought new forms of expression and aimed her camera at the deep south and the countryside in Virginia, Georgia and Mississippi. Her technically experimental photos in the “Deep South” series harks back to the early days of photography and gives the impression of a painterly 19th century patina.

“I have been photographing the South for thirty-six years, finding memory, love, and, occasionally, paradise in the uniquely radical Southern light. I look for it always, the thick, vespertine gloaming that douses the day´s heat. When it comes, the landscape grows soft and vague, as if inadequately summoned up by some shiftless deity, casually neglectful of the details,” writes Sally Mann in the introduction to “Deep South” (Bullfinch, 2005).

Portraits like death masks

The death of her father sparked her most recent project, “What Remains”, which consists of several photographic suites on the theme of death. Sally Mann has sought various motifs with a personal, scientific and documentary purpose, including subjects such as the well-beloved dog, rotting corpses and a killed escaped convict. It was in this context and emotional state that Sally Mann once more photographed her children, now as adults. The series “Faces” consists of close-up portraits of Emmett, Jessie and Virginia. In their exquisite beauty these portraits resemble death masks.

Photo methods using tea and asphalt

Sally Mann generally uses a large-format camera and has experimented with various early developing methods. The suites “Deep South” and “What Remains” were largely printed using her own chemical mixture, incorporating tea and asphalt in the process, all to achieve the right structure and atmosphere in the picture. Her methods require her to use a mobile darkroom when doing field work. Both the coating of glass plates and developing have to be performed in complete darkness. Sally Mann’s devotion to doing everything herself enhances her almost mythical persona. Nor does she have any inclination for the new digital technology:
“Digital images don’t smell,” she says.

Sally Mann

Sally Mann was born in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia. She studied at several of the most prestigious art and photography schools in the USA. Her work features in several prominent art collections, including that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, along with several private collections and institutions in Europe. The influential TIME Magazine dubbed Sally Mann America’s foremost photographer in 2001. The BBC recently made a documentary on her unique career.

A ViPS Exhibition
Produced by Kulturhuset.
Curator: Hasse Persson.
The exhibition is part of Kulturhuset’s major photography and moving image project, ViPS – Video Photography Stockholm.
Technical partners: Mitsubishi Electric
We are grateful to Metro, Fondberg & Co and Best Western Wallin Hotel for their support.

Ultra Violent Design @ Tensta Konsthall

2006-10-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

QU'EST-CE QUE TU VEUX, SAMIR? LAISSE-NOUS TRANQUILLES!*
*What do you want Samir, leave us alone!

When I was small I never said a word and I was never any trouble. I want to tell you all a story. The story takes place here and now. Look around you. It is here; however, it also took place long ago. Think about it and remember. Or it will take place in your future dreams. Right now I am not sure if I have begun at the very end or in the middle. No matter what, it is exciting. I am not really sure what is going to happen or has happened. But you should know that it is a difficult story to tell because it hurts: it hurts so much that I want to stop. Trouble is, it can only stop then in one way. And if the story ends, then everything ends and then there is no way back again. I know that. So, even though I am tired, I am going to carry on. This story is going to be about strong powers - like hate and anger. But it might turn out to be about the exact opposite.
/Samir Alj Fält

Ultra Violence Design is an interactive design project in which the designer and interior architect Samir Alj Fält worked with young people, including pupils from Bussenhus School in Tensta. Together
they have found different ways of using vandalism in the design process to create new expressions of design.

Ultra Violence Design is an extended design process with a starting point in the marks and disfigurations in our private and public surroundings. By violently attacking different pieces of furniture and samples of material, Samir Alj Fält and the participating children work with the power in destructivity and explore the driving force and longing that exists within the expressions of anger and frustration. The project is based on Samir Alj Fälts own experiences during his childhood, when he and his friends made experiments with different materials to see what happens, out of curiosity as well as a means to get rid of aggressions. The experiments included throwing things off cliffs or burning them. By working with the kids, Samir returns to this initial driving force and develops a design process far from his usually more precise and controlled ways of working.

The project discuss excluding structures of society, to explore how frustration can be used in a creative way, and to see if there are ways of creating design for the public space that not only can resist violence, but can actually be improved by it. In the process the project has come to revolve as much around the private experiences as the public space. Ultra Violence Design is also about the process of creating as a need for love and confirmation. Ultra Violence Design involves a collaborative project with Xposeptember, a poster with pictures of vandalism and destruction in their surroundings, taken by the pupils from the Bussenhus School.

Samir Alj Fält is educated at interior decoration and furniture design at Konstfack, University College of Arts Crafts and Design. He often works in an involving and interactive design, in which the audience participate in the creative process. Samir Alj Fält has exhibited his projects at, among other, the Swedish National Museum, Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Onoma, Fiskars in Helsinki, at Stockholm Furniture Fair, Älvsjö, the international design fair in Milano and at the exhibition Please Disturb! at Svensk Form, Stockholm and 7 other cities in Sweden. Samir Alj Fält designed interiors at Lava(Kulturhuset), Stockholms läns museum, Restaurant Koloni Garden, the exhibition Ung Form 06/07 and run the design company rethink design.

Curators: Konst2 (Rodrigo Mallea Lira, Ylva Ogland, Jelena Rundqvist)
Project Manager: Katarina Sjögren
Coordinators education: Petra Nickson, Camilla Åhlén
Economy and sponsors: Jun-Hi Wennergren
Lightning: Ulrika Bergström;
Technician: Adam Valkare;
Productuction assistant: Patrick Kretschek
Coordinator Bussenhus School: Endre Sziraki.
Ultravåldsdesign is made possible by: Allmänna Arvsfonden, Stiftelsen
Framtidens kultur, Konstnärsnämnden, Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse.

Thanks to Farouq, Amir, Mohammed A, Ismael, Mohammed, Haidar, Yosef, Niklas T, Asli, Reyhen, Rachid, Orhan Tümer, Mahdi Abdurahman-Said, Kübra Candemir, Jannis Frantsalis, Ali Kulbay, Wosam Ibrahim-Noor, Milien Menghisteab, Magdalena Abdel, Pumpuie Khuankwai, Endre Sziraki, Philip Olsson, Tobias Sjöberg, Sara Nordström, Diabolaget.

In collaboration with Bussenhus School and Xposeptember

L.A. Trash and Treasure @ Milliken Gallery

2006-10-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

L.A. Trash and Treasure
Oct 19 – Nov 25, 2006
Opening October 19th 5-8pm

Participating artists: Jason Meadows, Evan Holloway, Sterling Ruby, Richard Hawkins, Tom Allen, Aaron Curry, Patrick Hill, Ry Rocklen, Gerald Davis, Gustavo Herrera, Mindy Shapero, Henry Taylor, Amy Sarkisian, Liz Craft, John Williams. Curator: Liv Stoltz

"L.A. is a dominant producer of the best art that’s being made today."
-Bruce Hainley

Milliken gallery is proud to present L.A. Trash and Treasure an exhibition with 15 artists from Los Angeles that have received international attention in the recent years. L.A. Trash and Treasure covers the contemporary Los Angeles art scene from 1997 the moment Lars Nilsson presented Sunshine & Noir (L.A 1960;1997) at the Louisiana Museum – the last time a major show was produced for the Scandinavian audience.

L.A. Trash and Treasure focuses on sculpture - which has a strong tradition in L.A. but features also drawings and paintings. All newly produced works illustrating the different tendencies existing in Los Angeles today. This show demonstrates a younger generation of artists and their relationship to an extraordinary group of artists spawned from the 1960s including Charles Ray, John Baldessari, John McCracken, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Bruce Nauman etc.

Instead of conceptual consensus, the exhibition presents different thematic lines that can be categorized with subtitles, Lost and Found (artists use and recycling of various found objects in high-low materials, The Fantastic (artists using archetypical fantastical symbols, popular culture, fantasy, horror) and Reconsidering History (artists referring to art history and reinterpreting different movements such as Romanticism, Surrealism and typical L.A. movements from the 60s for example finish fetish, light- and space movement).

In addition to the exhibition an extensive conversation between Liv Stoltz and Bruce Hainley will be available for download at the gallery website. Mr. Hainley is a writer, art critic contributor in Art Forum, Frieze, Cabinet and curator, based in Los Angeles and an active and important voice in contemporary L.A. art today.

For more information or press images please contact Milliken gallery.

Milliken Gallery
Luntmakargatan 78
113 51 Stockholm Sweden
Tel: +46 (0)8 673 7010
Fax: +46 (0)8 673 7020
E-mail: mail@millikengallery.com

Richard Kern @ Roger Björkholmen Galleri

2006-10-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

30 september - 28 oktober 2006

Roger Björkholmen Galleri
Kommendörsgatan 15, Stockholm

Öppet: Ti-Fre 13-17 Lö 12-16

Roger Björkholmen Galleri presenterar stolt Richard Kerns tredje utställning på galleriet.

Richard Kern född i North Carolina, USA är en underground filmare, performance-konstnär och fotograf. Denna "off the wall" konstnär som älskar att chockera och bryta tabun blev först känd som ett resultat av hans våldsamma performance framträdanden i New York. Hans filmer tillsammans med legendariska Lydia Lunch har blivit censurerade över hela världen.

1983 köpte Kern sin första super 8 kamera och började filma och fotografera sina vänner och medarbetare såsom Lydia Lunch och bandet Sonic Youth. Tillsammans med Lydia Lunch har han gjort film som regissören John Waters har kallat "den ultimata filmen för psykopater". Sedan 1990 har Kern fokuserat på fotografi. Hans fotografier behandlar den mörka sidan av den amerikanska drömmen där narcissistiska fantasier, aggressiva fobier och okontrollerbara drifter hamnar under Kerns gränsöverskridande skärskådande.

I hans tredje utställning i Stockholm presenteras äldre bilder från 1992-93 i stort format ur serien "NewYork Girls" ". I dessa bilder finns klara kopplingar till både barockmåleri och det under 1600-talet så vanliga chiaroscuro måleriet.

Bland de senaste utställningar Richard Kern delagit i ingår Göteborgs biennalen 2003 separatutställning på Palais de Tokyo i Paris 2004, ICA London separatuställning 2002.

För ytterligare information kontakta galleriet.

Roger Björkholmen Galleri
Karlavägen 24
114 31 Stockholm, Sweden
Tel: +46 8 611 26 30
info@rogerbjorkholmen.com

Maya Eizin Öijer @ Andréhn-Schiptjenko

2006-10-14T07:44:00.000-07:00

August 17 - September 16, 2006

FICTION

Maya Eizin Öijer at Andréhn-Schiptjenko
Aug 17 – Sep 16, 2006

We are proud to present Maya Eizin Öijer´s forth solo exhibition at Andréhn-Schiptjenko

Maya Eizin Öijer lives and works in Stockholm. She is represented in numerous institutions e.g. Moderna Museet in Stockholm. She has also held a professorship at the Royal College of Art (Konsthögskolan) in the same city. Her most recent show MAYA EIZIN ÖIJER 1980 - 2004 attracted a lot of attention and had 75.000 visitors while touring museums in Sweden. The book MAYA EIZIN ÖIJER was released by Bohusläns Museum in connection to the show.

At Andréhn-Schiptjenko she will present a new series of photographic works entitled FICTION. The works focus mostly on paperback covers from the 50´s. Parts from these commercial and veiled erotic covers, typical for it’s genre and era, are put together side by side with the artists own photographs of the more eternal love attribute - the rose. The images from the books show us an unreal and dramatized image of our existence. They are compared to the realistic photos of a rose and in the contrast between the two the artwork emerges. Even today we have difficulties not to get lost in an illusion created by imaginary stories. What is fiction and what is reality?

The FICTION series fit well into Maya Eizin Öijer´s imaginary world, in which she often combines her own work with parts of pictures from the art history and the media world. By combining different fragments of images, a visual and an emotional link is created from the present to our memories of the past. Maya Eizin Öijer explores the landscape of our subconscious mind and peers into the world of dreams and fantasies. The work is filled with symbols that evoke associations with myths, archetypes and the darker sides of our human emotions.

The FICTION series consists of photographs mounted behind 7 mm glass or printed images on cotton.

The exhibition opens Thurs, Aug 17, 5-8 pm and runs to Sep 16. The gallery is open Tues - Fri 11-5 and Sat 12-5.
For further information and visuals, please contact the gallery.

A mix of fashion show, pop video and urban fairy tale

2006-10-10T03:05:00.000-07:00

TYLER BRULÉ: You know it’s going to be a good week when you sail through Heathrow security, you board an almost empty aircraft up to Stockholm, the champagne is surprisingly chilled and the first officer tells you that air traffic control has permitted you to fly a straight line up to Arlanda and you’re going to touch down early. It only gets better when, somewhere just beyond Copenhagen, the clouds part and all the way from Malmö to Stockholm there are shimmering lakes, forests beginning their transformation from lush green to hot orange and tidy farms painted a uniform red.

If you’ve never been to Stockholm on a warm, sunny day in early autumn – go! Hit the city centre some time around 5.30pm as locals are jumping on their bikes and heading for drinks after work and the scene is a mix of fashion show, perfectly choreographed pop video and urban fairy tale. I often warn people who’ve never experienced this particular tableau to invest in a neck-brace for the following morning because they’ll be doing so much head-turning to catch glimpses of cuties on Kronan bicycles that they’re bound to strain a neck muscle. My travel companion Robyn was almost rushed to casualty after an hour on the streets. “Could the residents be any more gorgeous if they tried?” she asked. “The slightly fading tans, the perfect little outfits, the great accessories and they’re all on bikes. It’s almost too perfect.”

Read the full column in the Financial Times here.

If you are not a subscriber, go to the Bongorama Business Center here. [opening soon, ed.]

Filmhuset plays host to Anita Ekberg

2006-09-24T01:44:00.000-07:00

On 29 September, the legendary Swedish film star Anita Ekberg will be 75 years old. The Swedish Film Institute is celebrating this event with the exhibition Anita of Sweden and a series of her films at Cinemateket this autumn.

The exhibition Anita of Sweden is made up of photographs, film stills and posters from the Swedish Film Institute archives – unique photographs by Georg Oddner – some of which were previously unseen, and memorabilia on loan to the institute, including costumes, etc. The curators are Louise Lagerström and Ragnar Berthling.

Anita of Sweden opens on 1 October, and the ceremony will be followed by a conversation between Anita Ekberg and Stina Lundberg Dabrowski in Filmhuset's Cinema Victor. After the conversation, La Dolce Vita will be screened.

In a career spanning six decades, Anita Ekberg has taken part in more than 60 films. Crowned as Miss Sweden in 1951, she went on to take part in the Miss Universe pageant in the United States, where she was offered a training contract by Universal Studios.

In 1956 she was awarded a Golden Globe in the "most promising newcomer" section. In the early 1960s she left Hollywood for Italy, where her role as the glamorous film star Sylvia in Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) won her instant fame around the world. Her scenes with Marcello Mastroianni in the Fontana di Trevi are among the most well known in the entire history of cinema.

In addition to Fellini, Anita Ekberg has worked with directors such as King Vidor (War and Peace), Robert Aldrich (4 for Texas), Vittorio De Sica (Woman times 7) and Bigas Luna (La Bámbola). The films to be screened at Cinemateket during October and November are War and Peace, Back from Eternity, Screaming Mimi, La Dolce Vita, Boccaccio 70, 4 for Texas, Gold of the Amazon Women and Fellini's Intervista.

Tickets for the event on 1 October (the conversation will be held in Swedish) can be purchased from the Filmhuset shop (open daily 11.00-16.00, or during evening screenings at Filmhuset between 19.00 and 21.00) or via the website www.sfi.se/filmbutiken.

The exhibition will run until the end of the year.

Photo: La Dolce Vita/Nordisk Film.

Red Hot Chili Peppers to Play Sweden

2006-08-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

Red Hot Chili Peppers have added another stop to their winter tour! Red Hot Chili Peppers will play Stockholm, Sweden on December 11th at the Stockholm Globe. Fan Club presale for this show will start on Thursday August 17th at 9:00am local time and public tickets will be available on August 21st!

Stockholm: Mecca For Affordable Talent

2006-08-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

What may be the most competitive stock exchange company in the world is based in a huge, renovated former Ford Motor Co. (F ) plant in a suburb of Stockholm. "To succeed, we need to do something special," says Jenny Rosberg, president for company services at OMX, owner of the Stockholm exchange. OMX is so good that it operates six other bourses in nearby countries and now provides cutting-edge trading technology to more than 50 markets spread from Switzerland to Singapore. OMX itself is pulling away from the New York Stock Exchange (NYX ) and NASDAQ (NDAQ ) in trading volumes of Finland's Nokia (NOK ) and Sweden's Ericsson (ERICY ) -- companies with a large number of U.S. shareholders.

Cities, too, need to offer something special to succeed in the 21st century, and Stockholm has hit on a potent combination of livability and highly valued skills. Stockholm is a safe, pastel-shaded place of nearly 2 million built around a harbor so clean that you can catch salmon from footbridges downtown. It's also a talent mecca for key technologies, especially telecommunications, thanks to the presence of phone-equipment giant Ericsson, innovative telecom operators like Tele2, and startups such as Nanoradio, where Ericsson alumni develop chips to turn mobile phones into entertainment centers. Such companies have helped push Sweden's research and development spending to 4% of gross domestic product -- among the world leaders.

With its international outlook, fluency in English, and strong science and engineering schools like the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden was always going to be a global player. But in recent years the government has taken some specific steps that have paid off handsomely. Policymakers deregulated the telecom industry, awarded so-called third-generation mobile licenses cheaply, and subsidized personal computers and broadband networks. The moves helped boost Sweden to near the top of the global charts in computer ownership, fiber-optic networks, and mobile-phone penetration. The government also welcomed foreign capital, leading to the late-1990s takeovers of Volvo by Ford (F ) and drugmaker Astra by Britain's Zeneca (AZN ). From 2001 to 2004, Sweden attracted $65 billion in foreign investment, a strong showing for a nation of 9 million. And while Sweden has a reputation for being pricey and high-tax, its cost of living and salary range are actually near the bottom of the scale for the West. Swedish telecom and IT engineers come about 40% cheaper than their counterparts in Japan and earn 24% less than those in the U.S., according to compensation consultants Watson Wyatt Worldwide (WW ).

Sweden, says Karl-Henrik Sundstrom, Ericsson's executive vice-president and chief financial officer, is "one of the most expensive [locations] for unskilled labor and one of the most inexpensive for skilled labor."

Stockholm's tolerant, nonhierarchical culture is particularly suited to responding to the rapidly changing demands of the 21st century marketplace. "We have a 'just do it' approach to everything; titles are not so important," says Mikael Schiller, managing director of Acne Jeans, a Stockholm-based designer label that sells in high-end stores such as Barneys (JNY ) in New York.

This can-do approach has helped apparel makers like Acne and Cheap Monday build international businesses with just a few employees. Web advertising shop Farfar competes for global accounts such as Nokia with a fraction of a New York or London staff. The payoff of this activity is strong growth. While Sweden's GDP is expanding at 4%, Stockholm's is probably cruising along in the 6%-to-7% range, estimates Peter Egardt, president of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce.

The new wealth is transforming the once-dowdy city as well. One example is Sodermalm, the old manufacturing district where designers and architects now have their offices in renovated factories. American Reed Kram, a senior partner in the Sodermalm design firm of Kram/Weisshaar, has worked on everything from changing rooms for Prada's Beverly Hills store to the podiums for the convention of Sweden's ruling Socialist Party. While Stockholm has top creative people, he says, you don't get overwhelmed the way you might in New York. "It's nice to be avant-garde in a place that is a little more traditional."

ART > Paul McCarthy @ Moderna Museet

2006-06-26T05:19:00.000-07:00

During the summer of 2006 Moderna Museet will present the largest and most comprehensive survey of American artist Paul McCarthy’s work to date. McCarthy (b. 1945) is one of his generation's most influential artists. Although he has been active for almost 40 years, he did not become known to the general public until the early 1990s. In his work McCarthy undertakes a critical processing of myths and stereotypes generated by American popular culture and how these, often embellished images collide with a reality filled with violence, pornography and madness. McCarthy has worked in a variety of techniques, including installation, sculpture, film and photography. The exhibition will contain work from the artist’s entire career and will include examples of all aspects of his work.

Please note! The exhibition includes works that may be disturbing to sensitive persons. The exhibition is not suitable for children.

Admission free!

Restaurang Stockholm

2006-04-04T00:12:00.000-07:00

Gamla Orientexpressen har avgått från Centralen och ersatts av en modern krog där köket omedelbart spårat ur. Restaurang Stockholm gör smakfattiga rätter på fina råvaror.

Mitt på centralstation ligger en gourmetkrog för svenska smaker. Det trodde man inte!

Än så länge gör sig Restaurang Stockholm bäst som strategiskt placerad bar med snygg inredning och bra humör. Förhoppningsvis drar den snart en blandad publik så att en och annan callgirl inte dominerar den sociala scenen.