Subscribe to the BrittonBritton newsletter! | Tell a friend about this page.

Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist

What a freaking art scene!

Claes Britton | Mar 12, 2007 | 1 comments

When looking at our moving images from Stockholm's recent Fashion Week, I realize immediately that I was far too positive in my comments on this event in this column – to the extent that I feel obliged to go in and modify that text in retrospect. I also receive a quite just, kind but determined reprimand for this unmotivated positivism from Peter, this fine young sceptic who I guess turned cynical at the age of eight or something in that neighborhood, much like Yours Truly. What happened? Where did my old bitchy critical attitude go? Was it some kind of sentimentally filantropic baklash from the extreme emotional pressure under which I've been living over the past six months – or was it simply my PR persona taking the best of me? Well, hell, be it as it will with that matter.

 

I sincerely hope that I'm not affected by the same complex syndrom when stating that Stockholm's art scene at the moment is nothing short of fucking fantastic. It can never before have been anywhere near this level. I brought Peter with me for a second visit to the magic Pipilotti Rist solo show at Magasin 3, an independant art hall of superior world class, owned by renowned art and design patron and former finance magnate Robert Weil. The two large ceiling projections downstairs are so stoned that you feel like bringing a whole hockey puck of ancient opium and spend the entire weekend on these carpet beds. Then when we filmed at the Modern museum, we were treated with another five star experience, with the extensive exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg's genious Combines, one of the greatest milestones in 20th century art. I was most taken by the holistically organic peasant color scale (in the catalogue, Pontus Hultén writes about Rauschenberg as a masterful colorist). Add to this the rightly praised, also large downstairs exhibition of South African William Kentridge, the two mini shows with El Perro and Thomas Ruff and a most dynamic end effective hanging of the magnificent collection, and you have a museum scene of absolute first rate international magnitude. I, if anyone, have bitched and mourned about the new museum in the disastrous building by Rafael Moneo. Therefore, it feels all the better to take off my hat for the achievements of my friend Lars Nittve, the museum's director, and his colleagues. In spite of all the magnificent art, the energy of the house itself was still the most powerful impression. I'll be damned if it doesen't once again feel like the musum of my childhood, under the legendary leadership of above mentioned Pontus Hultén. At the Bonniers konsthall (Bonniers art hall), this pleasant and beautiful new endowment to the city's art scene, Berlin-based Italian Monica Bonvicini dons an intriguing study of the macho eroticism of the construction industry, a mite over-intellectualized en Berlinish for my personal taste. The subject, however, is of course a most relevant. We always knew that there was something gravely perverse with all these power drill, tools belts, hooks, chains, etcetera. A long string of other interesting exhibitions more than well worth a visit are also on in other museums and private galleries around town. Only time sets a limit to inspiring visual and emotional kicks. You'll have to go to places like New York or Paris to find something equivelent of the quality on display in Stockholm right now and it's highly doubtful whether you'll even find it there. So just pull that thumb out, put on a fancy spring day attire and get your lazy behind down upon the town for a swanky art promenade!

Comments

Lägg till kommentar

Recent blog entries