Innovative restaurants, cool scandinavian design, Swedish’s clothes and musicians in the world. As the Nordic region’s largest city, Stockholm has not had to be ashamed in terms of the pop variety. And now, the city can also offer an art scene at the same level. The mean Joanna Sundström, the initiator of the Stockholm Art Week, a week which aims to highlight the city’s konstutbud and showcase Sweden as an attractive konstdestination.
– It is time to identify Stockholm konstmecka. A lot has happened in art since we started konstveckan 2012. You have nature, fashion, wide range of restaurants and bars, elegant design, and in addition, a large konstutbud in a small space, ” says Joanna Sundström.
expanded, there is no doubt: On the side of the re-opening of the national museum – which drew over 500,000 visitors in the first five months – all of the private and municipal art galleries, museums, artist-run galleries emerged during the last decade developed the Stockholm art scene considerably. And also geographically, from earlier mainly have revolved around some innerstadskvarter are several platforms outside the duties – from Tray 3, which opened in the Freeport, already in the 80’s to the Färgfabriken in Liljeholmen, stockholm, sweden, Tensta Konsthall, Marabouparkens konsthall in Sundbyberg, sweden.
Nilo Ashlami and Alexandra Fjällström from the C/O Stockholm is preparing the exhibition during the konstveckan. Photo: Alexander Mahmoud
in Addition shows art events such as Stockholm Art Week, with its feature contemporary art fair Market, a growing interest for contemporary art in general – and the money it generates. So is the international trend, with more and more art fairs, with Art Basel and its three branches in Basel, Miami and Hong Kong as the prime example, deeply intertwined with commercial aspects where more and more see art as a good investment.
” Today are works of art goods in an increasingly upptrissad market where art events are a form of entertainment. If a ”kreddig”. In addition, it is no longer just the art that attracts people to museums and galleries. Today bet many places on the qualitative museishoppar and restaurants that attracts at least as much as the collections, ” says Sara Callahan, a senior lecturer at the department of culture and aesthetics at Stockholm university who has been studying the contemporary art.
to be changing, but the world fascination with american art is not something new. When Sara Callahan worked at a gallery in Seattle a decade ago she encountered often on visitors who interested in Swedish artists – such as the collector, who became the fire and flames when he realised that she was american: ”Oh, then can you help me to get hold of a Karin Mamma Andersson-painting, it is such a long waiting list to acquire her works!”.
Speaking to the population, Sweden has many artists internationally are of a high class. Since many of them are not based here anymore, but is active in the major art cities like Berlin and New York. The art world is very international today. And it is not as relevant to talk about nationality as it perhaps once was, ” says Sara Callahan.
Detail from C/O Stockholm exhibition at Dusty Deco. Photo: Alexander Mahmoud
concerned, it has, as mentioned been commercialised and was made more professional significantly since the turn of the century – which, incidentally, was a prosperous period with high international focus on including the museum of Modern art, Magasin III, and NOW magazine. It mean Ben Loveless, who pushed the Galerie Nordenhake in Stockholm since 2005. A development he says is good and bad:
– Today marked the international and to some extent also to the Stockholm art scene of the ”big business”. Which, unfortunately, means fewer eccentrics and less challenging program. It feels like there is a greater focus on the specific name and artistry as a brand rather than new ideas.
in Addition, says Ben Loveless, the participants in the arena of a different kind than when he started working in the Stockholm gallery activities twenty years ago. Today is the existence of konstrådgivare and different types of mellanhandlare more common – players who have ”sometimes a symbiotic, sometimes parasitic relationship to the galleries”.
And regardless if you want to push an ambitious gallery in New York, Tokyo, Johannesburg or Stockholm, it is dependent on the international market. And in the development the art fairs, the weekly Market at Liljevalchs, both grown in number and have much more influence.
In Dan Gilroys new film ”Velvet Buzzsaw”, a horror comedy about the Los Angeles cynical world, depicted how artists and collectors may pay a high price when art and commerce collide.
” I have not seen the ”Velvet Buzzsaw”, but I heard a long interview with the director who felt anxious. The art world is easy to parody, but more difficult to give a nuanced picture of – which is not, nor is the film’s meaning, ” says Ben Loveless.
contemporary art is an ongoing and ever-changing discourse in which commercial value sometimes overshadows the art’s intrinsic values – what are the values that galleristerna should see as their primary responsibility to protect, ” says Ben Loveless.
