photo hanging sculpture — Lars Englund, Relative, 1982 Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet Bildupphovsrätt 2022

Lars Englund

Under Construction

18.2 2023 – 3.9 2023

Malmö

The collection

Lars Englund’s art is characterized by exploration and could be described as “work in progress.” Englund has collaborated with cement and rubber factories, bases his work on machine parts and industrial materials, changes scale from model to monumental, and finds inspiration in subways and Baroque architecture alike. This exhibition spans from paintings Englund made the early 1950s that have rarely been shown to sculptures from the 2000s.

Visitors will recognize the materials Englund uses from building facades and workshops, and his choices draw our attention to our everyday surroundings, elevating the commonplace to the extraordinary. We can follow his exploration of form through an extensive collection of sketches, some of which are construction drawings, others painstakingly, almost meditatively, rendered repetitions.

This presentation combines a monographic collection exhibition with works on loan from the artist. The focus of Englund’s work is revealed in titles that associate to fundamental science, such as “Volume”, “Sphere”, and “Pars Pro Toto” (part of a whole). His sculptures, which often hang from the ceiling, interact with one another and challenge the surrounding space. They establish a dialogue with the building’s industrial history as an electrical power plant, designed by John Smedberg and constructed in 1901, but also with its present form as a work of architecture adapted by Tham & Videgård to be a museum, with its distinctive perforated orange facade—a material to which Englund makes reference.

Lars Englund was born in 1933 in Stockholm, and he now lives in Jonstorp, Scania County. Although in the studio his sculptures are packed together, in the gallery they are set off against their surroundings, creating directional axes through the space. There is no clear reference point for these works; instead, we are invited to move around and in relation to their abstract forms.

Lars Englund was born in 1933 in Stockholm, and now lives in Jonstorp, Scania County. Englund was celebrated with a large solo show at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 2005. Solo shows in Scania County include Dunkers kulturhus in Helsingborg 2003, Lunds konsthall 2002 and Krapperups konsthall in Höganäs 1998. Over the years, he has also shown at acclaimed international exhibitions in Venice, Warsaw, New York, and most recently in Paris at the Centre Pompidou’s 2021 exhibition [Aerodream].

Curator: Elisabeth Millqvist

The exhibition is made in collaboration with Yvonne Möller.

Join a short introduction by Curator and Museum Director Elisabeth Millqvist in the exhibition “Lars Englund – Under Construction”.