Hotel of the week: the Lydmar, Stockholm

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

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.

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Lars Nilsson @ Milliken Gallery

Lee Ronaldo @ Magasin 3

"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

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Gunilla Klingberg @ Bonniers Konsthall

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

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Tabaimo @ Moderna Museet

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

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

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Oddsters Total @ Marie Laveau feat., DJ Frederik Bjerregaard

Beirut Cafe

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

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

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