Ultra Violent Design @ Tensta Konsthall

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

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

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

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

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.]