[All about Loke, less about August Strindberg]
I recently reviewed Katarina Löfström’s exhibition ”Visioner” at Thielska Galleriet, sharing in it my two cents’ worth about the approach of contemporary art intervening and ”bending” a permanent museum collection. Artist Karin Häll is currently presenting an exhibition (”Subordinate”) at the Strindberg Studio Museum in Stockholm, that used to be the private residence in downtown Stockholm of the iconic and ”hyperbolic” Swedish author. Karin who used to be very active in the Konstnärshuset network, I met a years ago at ID:I Galleri and have seen for studio visits over time.
Art complacently and shoehorning itself into a museum with ”precious” touch; going in as a literal mirror is such a WHY situation? Do we need contemporary art to be decorative the way people decorate a sofa? This is not such case.
Karin who is used to pushing towards the bend where something (for some) might look like it lacks refinement, has a canny sense for making the dubiously attractive always and unfailingly interesting to look at. Her approach is to take a room, imprint it only in parts with physical gestures per object and sculpture as to create a new room within the room, with crucial parts of said new room edited out, as to open up the pensive side of the viewer’s brain. Here her entry into Strindberg is his poem about the folklore god Loke.
She’s more interested in your connotations than hers, and it’s evident she’s lacked interest to treat Strindberg as a holy omnipresence in her exhibition. The objects are either nifty and humorous or reek of subversive darkness. The latter easier to connect to the mood of Strindberg.
I came to think of the iconic Charlotte Rampling film ”The Night Portier” but were also amused to find a transformative sporting sculpture, which ought to tell you something of the material breadth. Miniature bits and bops of domestic rugs, here and there, used as binding weave feels like an allusion to her reluctance to fully embrace and bow down in Strindberg’s house.