ART NOTES
ART NOTES by Karolina Modig
APRIL 25, 2024
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EXHIBITION TEATERGRILLEN
Mikael Olsson At
Teatergrillen, Stockholm
30 January - 3 March, 2024
Self-portraiture has a long and meandering history. Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas, Amalia Ullman, Rafia Santana. If portraiture can be categorised as a social encounter, the self-portrait is a perceptual encounter with one’s own body, and all the physical constraints that such an act entails. The physiological impossibility of seeing oneself has fascinated artists for centuries and inspired great works that play with these limitations. The self-portraits of Mikael Olsson – which are actually demi-self-portraits, as they only capture the top of his head and his bespectacled eyes – are a brilliant entry into the mirror halls of art history.
- Sinziana Ravini
Olsson’s self-portraits/selfies challenge the narcissistic use of selfies as well as the status of influencers. Further he destabilizes the composition of a traditional selfie where the eye line is recommended to be one-third down from the top frame. Through play and intuition, Olsson’s images are marked by both intimacy and distance, the role of his own physical presence and the perceptive relationship to the surroundings.
JANUARY 30, 2024
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Private viewings Nordenhake
T NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE
See my work for T New York Times Style Magazine . In southern Sweden, a former schoolhouse has become a minimalist live-work space for the designer Ingegerd Råman — responsible for iconic Ikea collections, including the limited-edition 2016 Viktigt rattan-and-bamboo furniture and accessories line, as well as pared-down crystal vessels for the Swedish glassmaker Orrefors — and her partner of more than 50 years, Claes Söderquist, an artist and experimental filmmaker.
AUGUST 23, 2023
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WHAT IS A HOUSE FOR
Mikael Olsson on Frösakull House by Bruno Mathsson. Read the interview at www.whatisahousefor.com
FEBRUARY 16, 2023
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ARKITEKTUR
Cover story for magazine Arkitektur 1/2023 is out now. The blue house in Djursholm by architect Byggfenomen + Westblom Krasse Arkitektkontor and 2BKA is also published.
New editor Björn Ehrlemark.
FEBRUARY 8, 2023
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LWRNTZ (WORK IN PROGRESS) - MIKAEL OLSSON/JAN ERIK LUNDSTRöM
An excavation of Sigurd Lewerentz’ architectural remains.
First book out from Sweden's new architectural publisher Andersson Örn!
From the preface:
In this book, we are given a rare glimpse into Mikael Olsson’s ongoing work LWRNTZ: an artistic investigation of Sigurd Lewerentz’(1885–1975) architecture. Olsson’s finalized project will later on be published in a more extensive format, similar to his works ”Södrakull Frösakull” and ”on | auf” . Some of the photographs included here will possibly reappear, others may be reevaluated and disappear along the way. After all, this is a work in progress.
Lewerentz’ work spans over many decades and across a number of building types, styles, materials and techniques. This width is apparent in Olsson’s project, which could be labeled as an excavation of Lewerentz’ architectural remains, both known and unknown, wellpreserved and decayed.
This book is also a dialogue between the artist and photographer Mikael Olsson, and the curator and critic Jan-Erik Lundström – a dialogue, covering the photographic field, its actors, histories and theories, that began with a series of Zoom conversations between Olsson, Lundström and the editor of this book in 2021.
From Jan-Erik Lundström's essay:
The title LWRNTZ – which can be understood as a metonym, suggesting that here is a series of utterances which speak and express through proximity rather than similarity, hinted at by its omission of the vowels (three e) from Lewerentz’ name – illuminates and highlights a productive tension between referent (Lewerentz’ buildings) and figure (Olsson’s photographs), between motif and image, between the world of objects and things and – precisely – their metaphorical and metonymic representation. Indeed, the dimension of closeness is saturated and dense, both asymptotically and emphatically. The photographs live off, are nurtured by, and take place in the vicinity of these buildings, even if their primary aim is not necessarily to reproduce or represent them. The photos appreciate and honor the building’s independent status. It is a closeness that borders on merging, but that never crosses the line. Nearness but not parity or similarity.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2022
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OLSSON MIKAEL - MIKAEL OLSSON
New Book
ART AND THEORY, 2022
Self-portraiture has a long and meandering history. Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas, Amalia Ullman, Rafia Santana. If portraiture can be categorised as a social encounter, the self-portrait is a perceptual encounter with one’s own body, and all the physical constraints that such an act entails. The physiological impossibility of seeing oneself has fascinated artists for centuries and inspired great works that play with these limitations. The self-portraits of Mikael Olsson – which are actually demi-self-portraits, as they only capture the top of his head and his bespectacled eyes – are a brilliant entry into the mirror halls of art history. Sinziana Ravini.
Olsson’s self-portraits/selfies (since 2007) challenge the narcissistic use of selfies as well as the status of influencers. Further he destabilizes the composition of a traditional selfie where the eye line is recommended to be one-third down from the top frame. Through play and intuition, Olsson’s images are marked by both intimacy and distance, the role of his own physical presence and the perceptive relationship to the surroundings. Olsson Mikael includes an essay by writer and psychoanalyst Sinziana Ravini.
Photography: Mikael Olsson
Text: Sinziana Ravini
Translation: Christine Antaya
Copy-editing: Mikael Andersson
Design: Malin Augustsson and Mikael Olsson
2022, English, hardcover
64 pages, 21 x 15 cm
ISBN: 9789198672022
MAY 5, 2022
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GALERIE NORDENHAKE, MARKET ART FAIR, LILJEVALCHS 30 APRIL 2022
AT MARKET 2022 Galerie Nordenhake presents Petra Gipp’s and Mikael Olsson’s exploratory response to the work of Sigurd Lewerentz in a reiteration of their acclaimed presentation at the 2018 Venice Architectural Biennale.
The images of Mikael Olsson are held by the tension between visual faculties and visual conventions, the reality of perception and the reality of vision, of the concrete and the abstract.” Péter Nádas
Olsson’s photographic practice explores the reenactment of history and the presence of the past in current times. Olsson ́s underlying aim is to redefine the genre of classical documentary photography. In the breath of its scope, his investigation into the legacy of Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz (1885-1975) constitutes a catalog raisonne. At the same time Olsson’s lens selects and reveals potent present and ongoing scenes. Each image proposes the site as a stage, a generative space.
Petra Gipp’s sculpture constitutes an interpretation of Lewerentz’s canopy construction at S:t Gertrud and S:t Knuts kapell in Malmö in cross section. Her architectural sculptures are both monumental and subdued. In this work the complexity of the construction and its various volumes are offset by the sculpture’s apparent weightlessness and transparency.
Gipp’s practice is characterised by its fluid transition between architectural case study and freestanding sculpture. She is an internationally celebrated architect in her own right.
APRIL 30, 2022
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HCV FOTOZINE : 2021:2
New publication by HCV - Hasselblad Centers Vänner
Mikael Olsson - Olsson Mikael
JANUARY 1, 2022
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OSA CONFERENCE
Lecture Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio Mondat 29.11.2021.
Invited by Student Organisation of the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio (OSA). Luca Bonazzi, Tobia de Eccher and Edoardo Massa, representatives of OSA Lectures.
Mikael Olsson, Lerum, SE
Artist, photographer, actor, filmmaker. Graduated at the Department of Photography and Film at University of Gothenburg (1993-96).
As a student, he collaborated for a decade with Göteborg film festival, the largest film festival in the Nordic countries. After graduation, he has participated in numerous group exhibitions and had several solo exhibitions, both in Sweden and abroad. The work in Venice Biennale 2018 was an interpretation of Lewerentz work together with architect Petra Gipp. Olsson’s collaborations are wide-ranging and include various forms of expressions and representations. He has widely collaborated with architects, including Valerio Olgiati, Christian Kerez. The work on | auf is in dialogue with Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron and Ai Weiwei Serpentine Pavilion 2012. He starred in the award-winning films The Square (2017) by Ruben Östlund and Suspiria (2018) by Luca Guadagnino. His work as artist is represented at Galerie Nordenhake, based in Berlin, Stockholm and Mexico City.
NOVEMBER 29, 2021
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ART NOTES by Karolina Modig
APRIL 25, 2024
Share on Facebook Twitter
→ ART NOTES
EXHIBITION TEATERGRILLEN
Mikael Olsson At
Teatergrillen, Stockholm
30 January - 3 March, 2024
Self-portraiture has a long and meandering history. Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas, Amalia Ullman, Rafia Santana. If portraiture can be categorised as a social encounter, the self-portrait is a perceptual encounter with one’s own body, and all the physical constraints that such an act entails. The physiological impossibility of seeing oneself has fascinated artists for centuries and inspired great works that play with these limitations. The self-portraits of Mikael Olsson – which are actually demi-self-portraits, as they only capture the top of his head and his bespectacled eyes – are a brilliant entry into the mirror halls of art history.
- Sinziana Ravini
Olsson’s self-portraits/selfies challenge the narcissistic use of selfies as well as the status of influencers. Further he destabilizes the composition of a traditional selfie where the eye line is recommended to be one-third down from the top frame. Through play and intuition, Olsson’s images are marked by both intimacy and distance, the role of his own physical presence and the perceptive relationship to the surroundings.
JANUARY 30, 2024
Share on Facebook Twitter
Private viewings Nordenhake
T NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE
See my work for T New York Times Style Magazine . In southern Sweden, a former schoolhouse has become a minimalist live-work space for the designer Ingegerd Råman — responsible for iconic Ikea collections, including the limited-edition 2016 Viktigt rattan-and-bamboo furniture and accessories line, as well as pared-down crystal vessels for the Swedish glassmaker Orrefors — and her partner of more than 50 years, Claes Söderquist, an artist and experimental filmmaker.
AUGUST 23, 2023
Share on Facebook Twitter
→ T New York Times Style Magazine
WHAT IS A HOUSE FOR
Mikael Olsson on Frösakull House by Bruno Mathsson. Read the interview at www.whatisahousefor.com
FEBRUARY 16, 2023
Share on Facebook Twitter
→ WHAT IS A HOUSE FOR
ARKITEKTUR
Cover story for magazine Arkitektur 1/2023 is out now. The blue house in Djursholm by architect Byggfenomen + Westblom Krasse Arkitektkontor and 2BKA is also published.
New editor Björn Ehrlemark.
FEBRUARY 8, 2023
Share on Facebook Twitter
→ ARKITEKTUR
LWRNTZ (WORK IN PROGRESS) - MIKAEL OLSSON/JAN ERIK LUNDSTRöM
An excavation of Sigurd Lewerentz’ architectural remains.
First book out from Sweden's new architectural publisher Andersson Örn!
From the preface:
In this book, we are given a rare glimpse into Mikael Olsson’s ongoing work LWRNTZ: an artistic investigation of Sigurd Lewerentz’(1885–1975) architecture. Olsson’s finalized project will later on be published in a more extensive format, similar to his works ”Södrakull Frösakull” and ”on | auf” . Some of the photographs included here will possibly reappear, others may be reevaluated and disappear along the way. After all, this is a work in progress.
Lewerentz’ work spans over many decades and across a number of building types, styles, materials and techniques. This width is apparent in Olsson’s project, which could be labeled as an excavation of Lewerentz’ architectural remains, both known and unknown, wellpreserved and decayed.
This book is also a dialogue between the artist and photographer Mikael Olsson, and the curator and critic Jan-Erik Lundström – a dialogue, covering the photographic field, its actors, histories and theories, that began with a series of Zoom conversations between Olsson, Lundström and the editor of this book in 2021.
From Jan-Erik Lundström's essay:
The title LWRNTZ – which can be understood as a metonym, suggesting that here is a series of utterances which speak and express through proximity rather than similarity, hinted at by its omission of the vowels (three e) from Lewerentz’ name – illuminates and highlights a productive tension between referent (Lewerentz’ buildings) and figure (Olsson’s photographs), between motif and image, between the world of objects and things and – precisely – their metaphorical and metonymic representation. Indeed, the dimension of closeness is saturated and dense, both asymptotically and emphatically. The photographs live off, are nurtured by, and take place in the vicinity of these buildings, even if their primary aim is not necessarily to reproduce or represent them. The photos appreciate and honor the building’s independent status. It is a closeness that borders on merging, but that never crosses the line. Nearness but not parity or similarity.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2022
Share on Facebook Twitter
→ Konstig Bookstore
OLSSON MIKAEL - MIKAEL OLSSON
New Book
ART AND THEORY, 2022
Self-portraiture has a long and meandering history. Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas, Amalia Ullman, Rafia Santana. If portraiture can be categorised as a social encounter, the self-portrait is a perceptual encounter with one’s own body, and all the physical constraints that such an act entails. The physiological impossibility of seeing oneself has fascinated artists for centuries and inspired great works that play with these limitations. The self-portraits of Mikael Olsson – which are actually demi-self-portraits, as they only capture the top of his head and his bespectacled eyes – are a brilliant entry into the mirror halls of art history. Sinziana Ravini.
Olsson’s self-portraits/selfies (since 2007) challenge the narcissistic use of selfies as well as the status of influencers. Further he destabilizes the composition of a traditional selfie where the eye line is recommended to be one-third down from the top frame. Through play and intuition, Olsson’s images are marked by both intimacy and distance, the role of his own physical presence and the perceptive relationship to the surroundings. Olsson Mikael includes an essay by writer and psychoanalyst Sinziana Ravini.
Photography: Mikael Olsson
Text: Sinziana Ravini
Translation: Christine Antaya
Copy-editing: Mikael Andersson
Design: Malin Augustsson and Mikael Olsson
2022, English, hardcover
64 pages, 21 x 15 cm
ISBN: 9789198672022
MAY 5, 2022
Share on Facebook Twitter
→ ART AND THEORY
GALERIE NORDENHAKE, MARKET ART FAIR, LILJEVALCHS 30 APRIL 2022
AT MARKET 2022 Galerie Nordenhake presents Petra Gipp’s and Mikael Olsson’s exploratory response to the work of Sigurd Lewerentz in a reiteration of their acclaimed presentation at the 2018 Venice Architectural Biennale.
The images of Mikael Olsson are held by the tension between visual faculties and visual conventions, the reality of perception and the reality of vision, of the concrete and the abstract.” Péter Nádas
Olsson’s photographic practice explores the reenactment of history and the presence of the past in current times. Olsson ́s underlying aim is to redefine the genre of classical documentary photography. In the breath of its scope, his investigation into the legacy of Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz (1885-1975) constitutes a catalog raisonne. At the same time Olsson’s lens selects and reveals potent present and ongoing scenes. Each image proposes the site as a stage, a generative space.
Petra Gipp’s sculpture constitutes an interpretation of Lewerentz’s canopy construction at S:t Gertrud and S:t Knuts kapell in Malmö in cross section. Her architectural sculptures are both monumental and subdued. In this work the complexity of the construction and its various volumes are offset by the sculpture’s apparent weightlessness and transparency.
Gipp’s practice is characterised by its fluid transition between architectural case study and freestanding sculpture. She is an internationally celebrated architect in her own right.
APRIL 30, 2022
Share on Facebook Twitter
→ Galerie Nordenhake, Market Art Fair, Liljevalchs
HCV FOTOZINE : 2021:2
New publication by HCV - Hasselblad Centers Vänner
Mikael Olsson - Olsson Mikael
JANUARY 1, 2022
Share on Facebook Twitter
OSA CONFERENCE
Lecture Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio Mondat 29.11.2021.
Invited by Student Organisation of the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio (OSA). Luca Bonazzi, Tobia de Eccher and Edoardo Massa, representatives of OSA Lectures.
Mikael Olsson, Lerum, SE
Artist, photographer, actor, filmmaker. Graduated at the Department of Photography and Film at University of Gothenburg (1993-96).
As a student, he collaborated for a decade with Göteborg film festival, the largest film festival in the Nordic countries. After graduation, he has participated in numerous group exhibitions and had several solo exhibitions, both in Sweden and abroad. The work in Venice Biennale 2018 was an interpretation of Lewerentz work together with architect Petra Gipp. Olsson’s collaborations are wide-ranging and include various forms of expressions and representations. He has widely collaborated with architects, including Valerio Olgiati, Christian Kerez. The work on | auf is in dialogue with Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron and Ai Weiwei Serpentine Pavilion 2012. He starred in the award-winning films The Square (2017) by Ruben Östlund and Suspiria (2018) by Luca Guadagnino. His work as artist is represented at Galerie Nordenhake, based in Berlin, Stockholm and Mexico City.
NOVEMBER 29, 2021
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→ Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio
1234567891011121314