A drawing with two naked persons

Edith Hammar, Matches, 2021 Photo: Tobias Fischer / Moderna Museet © Edith Hammar

Swedish acquisitions

Matches

7.5 2022 – 14.8 2022

Stockholm

In the groupshow “Swedish acquisitions: Matches” you will encounter about 40 works of art that were purchased last year for Moderna Museet’s collection in connection with the acquisition project “Swedish Acquisitions 2021”.

The works in the exhibition all have in common that they highlight art’s power to push boundaries and shake up the way we perceive our surroundings as well as what we see as possible.

If the first exhibition, “Insights”, lingered on the intimate and the painful, “Matches” opens up to the world. Curiosity and imagination characterize the artistic methods, forms and themes that are being examined. Movement and interplay, action and friction, community and collectivity are some leitmotifs.

“Matches” is rich in angles, encompasses a wide variety of languages and methods and involves artists from different generations from all over the country.

A painting depicting a person sitting in a studio in Berlin
Gittan Jönsson, Drontheimer strasse 36a!, 2018 © Gittan Jönsson Photo: Tobias Fischer / Moderna Museet Bildupphovsrätt 2022
Still from a video. In yellow on top of the picture is written RESILIENCE
Joar Nango, The indigenuity manifesto, 2016 © Joar Nango

Video manifesto, milk and the mean value

With their work “Cosmic Latte” (2020) the art-duo Norberg-Sundén travels into space to create a universe of shapes and materials connected with the history, meaning and symbolism of milk. An explosive video manifesto by Joar Nango shows us innovative architectural solutions in Sápmi and how all things and materials carry the ability to become something completely different.

A story of the mediocre and the mean value becomes a commentary on individualism in Iris Smeds’ surrealist film “The Average” (2019).

The artist’s role and the conditions for creation

See installation, performance, video, painting, drawing, sculpture and discover how art can lead us into magical and mythical worlds, promote biodiversity or generate its own systems, symbols and living conditions. Some of the artworks critique society and are research oriented while approaching alternative ways of examining and seeing the world around them as well as historical events. Others hold space for love of nature and the earth on which we stand.

The artist’s role and the conditions for creating exists in the exhibition as an open question. In Ami Bergman’s self-portrait, an older woman appears with huge hands that possess the ability to create her own place in the world. Gittan Jönsson invites us into her studio on Drontheimstrasse in Berlin where we see paintings in different stages.

A painting of a person with big hands
Ami Bergman, Self-portrait, 2018 © Ami Bergman Photo: Tobias Fischer / Moderna Museet Bildupphovsrätt 2022
Photo of a sculpture
Jan Cardell, Bug, 1998 © Jan Cardell Photo: Tobias Fischer / Moderna Museet

Lights a spark or plays with fire

– In “Swedish acquisitions: Matches” we find art which lights a spark or plays with fire. It can be transformed into heat but also into something powerful and flammable, says curator Asrin Haidari.

* The artwork “Insurgency of Life (Lego Pedometer Cheating Machines)” by Goldin+Senneby is not on display due to technical reasons.

* The artwork “Monument (version 2)” by Måns Wrange is not on display due to technical reasons.

More about this exhibition