Photography of Karl-Göran Persson, discovered in 1981. Unknown photographer
Redoubt
John Skoog in collaboration with Laslo Chenchanna, Julian Ernst, Gabriel Karlsson, Erlend Rødsten, Søren Schwarzberg, Ernst Skoog
14.2 – 17.5 2026
Malmö
Opens in 41 days
How do you build a sense of safety in a world that trembles? On the Scanian plain, the farm labourer Karl-Göran Persson constructed his own fortress – a shield against the war he feared but that never came.
In the late 1940s, amid escalating geopolitical tensions and shortly after the pamphlet “If War Comes” was sent to Swedish households, Karl-Göran Persson began the lifelong transformation of his home into a reinforced bunker. With scrap and concrete, he built a place where fear became its form and solitude its masonry – at once a fortress and a brutalist sculpture. For fifteen years, the artist John Skoog has followed the trail of Karl-Göran Persson. The resulting collaborative exhibition, “Redoubt”, centres on a life and a sculpture moulded by anxiety – a mirror for our time.
Curator: Joa Ljungberg
The exhibition is shown in the Turbine Hall
