Arkipelag

Kalmar konstmuseum is announcing the opening of its largest exhibition to date: a presentation of the work of artist Magnus Petersson. Petersson lives and works in Kalmar and for several years has been one of the region’s most renowned artists. He has participated in a number of exhibitions throughout Sweden, and in Germany, the United States, and Russia as well. Recently a solo show of his work opened at Studio Galeria in Warsaw, a well-known public gallery. This spring he will be part of an exhibition at Rostocks Kunsthalle in Germany.

Petersson has found his own way of working. His is a world of history, cultural heritage, and memory. His work often deals with the unseen and the uncertain, or the interaction between public and private histories. In a country like Sweden, which experienced a long period of continual economic success during which its citizens believed their standard of living would always continue to improve, and where that belief seemed to be confirmed year after year, history lost its significance. The future became more important. Cultural heritage was no longer considered important either; it was rather seen as something that needed to be freshened up and replaced with the new. In that spirit many Swedish cities demolished significant parts of their urban cores, replacing them with development that symbolized progress and the welfare state.

Now that we have lost some of our faith in unflagging economic growth, and now that the future is no longer unquestionably bright for everyone, Petersson’s work provides distracting reminders of what we have lost, though that loss has not been complete - many disturbing fragments have been left in our memory. The artist’s earlier work featured memories of his grandparents’ homes in a series entitled Sealed, and forgotten historical events such as shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea in the Stills series. Petersson’s works serve as a kind of mementos of something we’ve lost, though it’s not clear exactly what. They often inhabit a twilight zone that plays out between a lost history, a lost cultural heritage, and a lost future.

For the exhibition Arkipelag (Archipelago), Petersson has built a seventy-square-meter model at 1:40 scale of a fictional group of islands. The archipelago is strongly rooted in Sweden’s cultural history, and has contributed much to the creation of our identity. For many Swedes, our coastal archipelagos are the epitome of summer and vacation. They represent something entirely positive. The archipelago has been a common subject in the arts since the nineteenth century, used by Strindberg in his novel The People of Hemsö and by Astrid Lindgren in Life on Seacrow Island. But perhaps this image of the archipelago is one of those things that are disappearing, with the ongoing discussions about changing our shoreline protection legislation to make it easier to build on waterfront property. Arkipelag moves between private experience, shared collective identity-building memory, and something that does in fact seem on the verge of being lost.

Curator: Martin Schibli

OPENING Saturday, December 10
2:00 PM Director of Exhibitions/curator Martin Schibli opens the exhibition
3:00 PM  A conversation with the artist, Magnus Petersson

SCHEDULE
December 11, 2011, 2:00 PM: "Contemporary russian art today" 
Maria Udovydchenko, curator ,National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA), Moscow
January 29, 2012, 1:00 PM: Director of Exhibitions and curator Martin Schibli
shows the exhibition

The music for the exhibition written and composed by Neurobach

For further information, please contact: Director of Exhibitions/curator Martin Schibli
 +46 (0)480 426288, martin.schibli@kalmarkonstmuseum.se