There were a dozen people in my t-bana carriage this morning. Eleven of them were looking at their phones. One was reading an actual book. I was looking at my phone to write this note to myself. It’s just an observation.
I was on my way into Stockholm to visit Liljevalchs for the annual spring salon. It was my third salon and something I’d like to have as a sort of artistic March pilgrimage. It was a bit of a pain to go the day after returning to Trosa, but it couldn’t be helped.
The first spring salon was organised by Prince Eugen back in 1921. Like the French Salon des Refusés, the idea was to display artists outside the mainstream who were catered for with the more conservative Konstakademien.
Needless to say, there is a lot of, what Bob would have classed as ‘not art’. But, for me anyway, it’s a chance to see how people are expressing themselves today; now.
I remember the first salon I attended back in 2021 when many pieces were influenced by the pandemic. Then, my second one, in 2023, when there wasn’t really a common theme. Both of them gave me an appreciation of how the modern world affects artists; affects the way they express themselves and the materials they use.
The salon is definitely not a showcase for ‘pretty pictures.’
The salon is open to any artist living and working in Sweden. And you don’t have to be Swedish. Alice Máselníková (above), for instance, was born in 1989 in the Czech Republic but moved to Sweden to work and create.
As a side note, it’s great the way a lot of the new artists have Instagram accounts. It makes them more accessible, more part of the modern world rather than some sort of elite group of creators that are only seen when they exhibit.
Head of Liljevalchs and Jury President, Joanna Sandell Wright and her team of judges selected 298 pieces from 163 artists from a total of 4,974 applicants. That’s an awful lot of whittling down but the result is definitely worth it. The salon was superb, as you’d expect.
As I wandered around the various rooms, I found it quite difficult to choose a favourite. I would find one then, not long afterwards, find another. And so it went on for a lot of my visit.
Then, of course, there were the other exhibitions in the other part of Liljevalchs.
There was Vibrationer by Mattias Lindbäck where monochrome video portraits of artists very slowly morph into each other. It was quite mesmerizing.
Then, where Lauren and I saw the haute couture exhibition last year, there was Hjärtahjärna which showcases around half of the art collection of Marika and CG Wachtmeister. The collection is amazingly eclectic, I have to say.
However, back at the salon, I managed to decide on two favourites. First there was Colonel, a stoneware fish, of sorts.
There were quite a few interesting ceramics this year, but they mostly depicted the uglier parts of society and life. The Colonel and his mate, the fish, were amusing as well as beautifully made.
In Beate Roberts Trygger’s own words:
To me there is a charm in the non-perfect, something appealing in the asymmetrically balanced. The alternative beauty. I create characters, little personalities, with their own expressions and stories. Minimal, barely noticeable, changes in the shape or slope of the clay can affect the entire experience in the encounter.
But, for paintings, I had to go for Fanny Blomfelt’s Båttur which I found so haunting that I kept returning to it.
Blomfelt says:
When I feel the Boat Tour is done, I stare at it and it stares back. The motif is a memory fragment from my childhood, and it is painted on a piece of salvaged wood. The work comes from a project where I test different materials and ways to revive and reproduce memories.
All up, a very satisfying exhibition. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
PS: There was an old woman on my tram back to Stockholm Centralen this afternoon with the Darth Vader theme as her ringtone. Then, in my packed train carriage, there was a cat that didn’t stop mewling.
