When buying art from an artist, you are buying more than just a random status piece. You invest in hundreds of hours of failures and attempts. You are buying days, weeks and months of frustration and moments of pure joy. You’re buying a piece of a person's heart, part of their soul, a moment of someone's life. What’s more, you’re buying the artist more time to do work with what they love most of all - create art that enrich our everyday lives.
With its 195 students from 28 countries, Konstfack’s degree show 2017 is the largest in the school’s 173-year history. Konstfack really is a terrific chance to discover some of the rising stars and the most innovative contemporary artists.
If we could offer you a word of advice, we would suggest that you leave your expectations outside. Allow yourself to be surprised. Trust your instincts, get lost in the small details, and you’ll find yourself taking in the whole picture. Stroll around and get a sense of it all, and you might be tempted to buy the piece you like the most. We bring you a small selection of the artists represented at Konstfack, and hope it adds a little something to your visit.
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The 35-year-old Swede from Skellefteå works primarily with issues related to his own body and death. Andreas moves in photography, sculpture and video work. He art is out of the ordinary and will something dramatic. The fact that he is a really nice chap does make his artistry even more compelling.
Alva Willemark
Alva is 29 years old, originally from Uppsala and Hackås. She works primarlily with performance but also moves between video, photography, text and objects. And during summers she sometimes paints! She is a flourishing artist and her art is touching and telling - about life, identity and memories.
She has previously exhibited here work at The Academy of Fine Arts in Trondheim and Gallery 60 in Umeå.
Seeing her talent, we understand why the 25-year-old Anna Tedestam, originally from IKEA-territory, was picked up by Mariefred-based gallery POM Gallery despite still at school. Anna is a sculptor and painter and her works reinvents form or function often to she create alternative worlds. She graduates her bachelor degree in ceramics and glassware this summer. Way to go Anna!
26-year old Elin grew up, in a tiny one-bus-a-day-type-of-town so getting exposed to art wasn’t everyday. But at the age of 6, she was lucky to find an arts course that organised by a truly super-inspiring artist. Today, her work is hot-property and she is argulbly one of the most-talked emerging artists right now.
She works with oil paintings, often in sizes that relates to her own body. The motifs are objects or bodies, sometimes moving or static.. Some of her paintings have several sentences long, figurative titles, others don’t have titles at all.
Alexander Höglund
Alexander is a Swedish artist and conceptualist. Prior to Konstfack Alexander has studied at the Gerriet Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Stockholm Filmschool and at Lund University. He is also an artistic director for the art performance gorup PLX.
Alexander practices in a variety of media ranging from virtual experience and sculpture to curating and public intervention. In his graduation show he presented a 35 minute video installation.
Emma Brålander
By working with colour and composition, Emma converts flat surfaces to three-dimensional rooms and the other way around. By twisting the space, she aims is to confuse the viewer of their perceptions. She wants to blur the borders between colour and objects to evoke curiosity for us to experience the space differently.
Her mother is one of Sweden's most popular artists. But it wasn’t until the age of 20, whilst studying art history at Uppsala University, that she decided to follow in her mother’s footsteps. And Dina is dead cool and relaxed. Her confidence shows that she is ready to unveil her graduation show and enter the professional art scene.
Dina’s work is an ongoing investigation of artistic making and they don’t leave you untouched. By the means of large scale, bodily, paintings, she tries to answer the question on what it means to pull something out in the existing.
Anna Sollevi
Traditional craft meets digital technology. Often with a starting point in textiles, Anna experiments how it’s affected by, and interacts in a combination with different materials and media, such as photo and video. Her work takes the shape costumes, installations and set design.
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The exhibition is inaugurated at 4pm today, Thursday 11 May. It runs until Sunday 21 May and visitors have the opportunity to take part in an exciting programme of presentations, workshops and performances. Next stop: Telefonplan (Lm Ericssons väg 14).
