Nordic Contemporary at Sven-Harrys konstmuseum

This fall, five highly topical Nordic artists will occupy Sven-Harrys konstmuseum. There will be monumental landscape paintings, transnational sculptures, critical videos, and breathtaking installations. Nordic Contemporary by Ars Fennica opens October 12 at Sven-Harrys konstmuseum.

The exhibition features five artists—Petri Ala-Maunus (Finland), Miriam Bäckström (Sweden), Ragnar Kjartansson (Iceland), Aurora Reinhard (Finland), and Egill Sæbjörnsson (Iceland)—who have been nominated as finalists for Ars Fennica, which is awarded every other year and is one of the most prestigious art prizes in the Nordic region. 40,000 euros in prize money makes it one of the region’s largest. For the first time in Sweden, Sven-Harrys konstmuseum is exhibiting all of the nominees together to create an exciting encounter with contemporary Nordic art.

Dragana Kusoffsky Maksimovic, CEO, Sven-Harrys konstmuseum:
“We are extremely proud to be able to show the work of these five fantastic artists, each with their own unique expression and artistry. With this exhibition we want to shine a light on some Nordic artists who give expression to the biggest and most challenging issues of our day.”

About the artists

Petri Ala-Maunus, Finland (b. 1970)
Petri Ala-Maunus decided to make his way as an artist through a negation. Since landscape painting did not interest him at all, that was exactly what he decided to start painting—but in his own way. In Ala-Maunus’s paintings there is no trace at all of human presence; instead we find dramatic views of a world either before or after humanity. Dramatic cliffs, wildly foaming waterfalls, and fir trees with dark branches are almost unreal in their effect. The paintings are reminiscent of the Romantic school of landscape painting that came out of the art academy in Düsseldorf during the nineteenth century.

Miriam Bäckström, Sweden (b. 1967)
Miriam Bäckström makes use of a variety of artistic media, including photography, film, performance, theater, installation, and text. The driving force behind Bäckström’s work is her meticulous studies of the symbiotic relationship between image and reality in the human psyche. Bäckström unfailingly aims for technical precision and innovation, regardless of whether she’s working with stills or motion pictures. At the same time, she has opened her work up to collaboration that allows for improvised and theatrical elements.

Ragnar Kjartansson, Iceland (b. 1976)
Ragnar Kjartansson moves freely among various art forms, composing music for sculptures, making performative paintings, and transforming film into tableaux vivants. His work encompasses video installations based on repetitive structures, performances, and series of plein air paintings. In his art, Kjartansson analyzes emotional layers, social dimensions, and conflicting elements that can be found in our everyday lives. Ragnar is this years recipient of the Ars Fennica award.

Aurora Reinhard, Finland (b. 1975)
Aurora Reinhard has been called a “great explorer of life.” She gathers motifs for her work from mass media and marketing illustrations and from the history of Western art. But she interprets the images through her own experiences and often by changing the gender of her subject or the way she looks at an object. In her art, Reinhard has long examined power and emotional relationships between men and women.

Egill Sæbjörnsson, Iceland (b. 1973)
Egil Sæbjörnsson is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is based on using technology as an extension of painting and sculpture, but also on combining real objects and projecting illusions with light, music, and performance. His art is experimental, shrewd, immediate, and deep. Questions about existence permeate his work. Sæbjörnsson is known primarily for his fictional friends, Ugh and Boogar, the thirty-six-meter-tall man-eating trolls who love coffee and became world-famous at the Venice Biennale in the summer of 2017.

About the Ars Fennica Award
Ars Fennica is awarded every second year by the Henna and Pertti Niemistös Ars Fennica Art Foundation. The foundation was established in 1990 to provide support for the visual arts, create new international contacts for Finnish artists, and encourage artists in their creative endeavors. 
40,000 euros in prize money makes it one of the largest and most well-established artist’s awards in the Nordic region.This year’s Ars Fennica Award has been bestowed on the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson.

The jury includes Leena Niemistö, MD; Leevi Haapala, Director of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art; Kai Kartio, Museum Director at Amos Rex; and artist Jussi Kivi. Roland Wetzel, Director at the Tinguely Museum in Basel, Switzerland, made the final selection of the award winner.

For more information och photos:
Emelie Sandahl, Event and Marketing
076 133 82 66
emelie@sven-harrys.se