Collected contemporaries

The opening exhibition of Moderna Museet in its temporary premises at Klarabergsviadukten 61 is devoted to new acquisitions of contemporary art. All media are represented: painting, photography, sculpture, objects, video, installations. Moving pictures are mainly projected on the big wall in a loop, other works are found in three galleries: Matts Leiderstam’s two works have a room of their own, since they need the space, while the works in the larger, surrounding gallery are a serious and intelligent play on the encounter between man, everyday existence and science. Inside the “box” in the centre of the large gallery we find the image of man, alone with his fate.

In the outer gallery – where the British artist Liam Gillick’s semi-transparent “screens” signify a meeting place – man is put in relation to the objects he is surrounded by; in the inner gallery the theme is identity in the more individual, exposed sense. In this way, the entire disposition of the gallery space reflects the outer and inner conditions under which we live. The selection process has focused this time on art from the Nordic countries and eastern and western Europe. But this is just the start. During our time at Klarabergsviadukten 61 we will be showing many more artists from different parts of the world.

Contemporary art is deeply preoccupied with the world around us. This is a tendency that has grown stronger, not least in the 1990s. 1960s pop art opened the door to mass society – with its commodities and popular culture – and it came to stay. New techniques, such as digital photography and video, have become commonplace over the past few decades, parallel with painting and sculpture. Art has tentacles into interior decorating, design and architecture, invention, science, ethnography and sociology. And it tells stories, poses political questions, examines gender issues and social spaces.

Nature imagery is usually a metaphor for culture – thus, a picture from a park can be about what happens there at night. In close-up photos we meet young people on the downward slopes of the social margins. These images can be in the countryside, together with the gang, or all alone, as in the works of Finnish Elina Brotherus, who examines her own history and identity as a woman through self-portraits in which she dresses in the wedding outfits her parents once wore. Sometimes the eyes are friendly but inquisitive, as in Galina Moskaleva’s photos from Belarus. They reveal the experience of a disease that has left its imperishable mark on the individual identity, the cancer that affected many people after the Chernobyl catastrophe. Where people meet friction arises, cultures rub against each other, old identities capsize, new ones emerge in the gaps. Man as mannequin has fascinated artists since the 18th century. The Swedish painter Jens Fänge picks up this thread, but in his pictures the fairytale figure lives perilously and appears to fall apart and disappear in the whirls of colour, as in a painterly drama. Mass culture promises more than it can live up to. The video artists alternate light-heartedness with empathy. Remarkable inventions allude to myths and legends, dreams – or politics!

Modernity is scrutinised, along with everyday life and sex. Everywhere, we find the same unquenchable desire to give reality an extra twist. The kitchen cooker is turned into a car, wild animals are elevated by geometrical figures. Nylon tights can be turned into a sunrise, the water in the pool becomes the darkness of existence, and steel enamelled flowers are pushing the basement to the surface. The video encompasses everyday life and bottomless lust.