The Fredrik Roos Art Grant 2017 is awarded to Oskar Hult, Jonas Silfversten Bergman, and Josefine Östberg Olsson

On March 28, Fredrik Roos’s birthday, an exhibition will open at Moderna Museet Malmö with this year’s three recipients of the Fredrik Roos Art Grant. The recipients have been selected from a shortlist of ten graduating art students, two from each of Sweden’s five fine arts colleges. From this group, the three recipients were chosen by a jury comprising the Fredrik Roos Foundation together with Daniel Birnbaum, Ann-Sofi Noring, and Iris Müller-Westermann from Moderna Museet. This year the Fredrik Roos Art Grant is awarded to Oskar Hult, Jonas Silfversten Bergman, and Josefine Östberg Olsson, who each receive a grant of 200,000 SEK (21,000 euros).

“We are very happy to continue our collaboration with the Fredrik Roos Foundation on this generous grant, which gives artists an opportunity to travel and gather new impressions,” says Iris Müller-Westermann, Director of the Moderna Museet Malmö. “The selection of this year’s recipients was extremely difficult, but each of the three artists represents a different exciting artistic style.”

Oskar Hult (b. 1986), a graduate of the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, is awarded the 2017 Fredrik Roos Art Grant, according to the jury’s statement, “for paintings that in a highly sensitive way allow materials and fragments from outside the world of art to be incorporated into new contexts in a non-hierarchical order. His pictures become time capsules that invite observers to immerse themselves and focus their gaze.”

Jonas Silfversten Bergman (b. 1991), a graduate of the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, is awarded the 2017 Fredrik Roos Art Grant “for his talent at developing a manner of painting based on industrial materials, colors, and symbols that communicates as much about what lies beyond painting as it does about painting itself.”

Josefine Östberg Olsson (b. 1983), a graduate of the Valand Academy in Gothenburg, is awarded the 2017 Fredrik Roos Art Grant “for her talent at exploring social stigmas and predominant customs through sculptural, performance-based works.”

As on previous occasions, Moderna Museet Malmö will host the awards ceremony on March 28, 6–8 pm. The museum will also feature the recipients in an exhibition that continues until April 16, 2017. The evening of the awards ceremony will include a performance of Josefine Östberg Olsson’s Drum Battle Presented by Your Local Gambler, in which drummers challenge each other in a competition and the audience is invited to wager and win money.