Skymning

Artist list

Akane Moriyama, Anders Moseholm, Carolina Gimeno, Devlin Shea, Isak Nordell, Jan Albert Carlsson, Josefin Rasmuson, Kristina Skantze, Olle Schmidt, Per Iver Lenderkrantz, Randall Mosman, Suzanne Duffour, Tarina Frank, Annika Johansson, Cecilia Haupt

Skymning presents 15 artists from Scandinavia whose practices reflect the ambiance of the Nordic region. In Swedish “skymning” is the word for dusk, but it can also relate to the transitions between light and dark, day and night. The further north you travel on the globe the longer the duration of this transition. The 18 hour long summer day is contrasted with an equally long winter night. Dawn and dusk last for many hours at the extreme points of the season. In the winter this means there is sometimes no day at all, but only dusk. In the summer the light sinks into long melancholic evenings, barely reaching darkness before sunrise.

ABBA’s Benny Andersson said in 2010 “We who live in these high latitudes, where it is winter in half a year, and where the sun is almost completely gone a few months, we have melancholy as a shared living environment. A melancholy reflected in our way of being, thinking, feeling – and making art and music.”

The artists in Skymning each interpret and react to this environment through their own medium. While some artists create curtains to segment and block the light, others paint or draw dramatic images harshly lit. The artworks renounce the beauty and rather enjoy the sublime ideal. So overwhelming that it inspires both joy and fear.

The artists in this exhibition are not all Nordic by birth but have made the north their workplace and home. Curated by Randall Mosman and Tarina Frank.