photo of construction — John Skoog, Fortification, Documentation from the construction wor, 2025 Photo: David Skoog

John Skoog

Redoubt

14.2 – 17.5 2026

Malmö

Opens in 124 days

How can one build a sense of security in a world that trembles? This question permeates John Skoog’s solo exhibition in the Turbine Hall at Moderna Museet Malmö. In the late 1940s, agricultural worker Karl-Göran Persson embarked on a lifelong quest to transform his home on the Skåne plain into an armoured fortress.

The first edition of the government’s pamphlet “If War Comes” had been distributed to Swedish households only a few years earlier, and he began this construction amidst escalating geopolitical tensions.

“Redoubt” is a further development of Skoog’s short film of the same name, which received the Baloise Art Prize in 2014 and was produced by the director and screenwriter Ruben Östlund’s company Plattform Produktion. Presenting both the fortress and the film, the exhibition tells the story of a sculptural lifework, born of apprehension – a mirror of our own times.

In collaboration with Søren Schwarzberg, Ernst Skoog, Gabriel Karlsson, Erland Rødsten, Laslo Chenchanna, Julian Ernst, Denis Lavant, and Ita Zbroniec-Zajt.