Jenny Magnusson

Magnusson is interested in how little is required to turn something into art. A minor change in an everyday object or to its location can have a considerable impact both on how objects and spatiality are perceived. The materials Magnusson uses are frequently ordinary, everyday: brown tape, cardboard, chipboard, frying-pans and so on, but what she does with these commonplace things can not be described as ordinary.

Magnusson places these everyday objects in new contexts. She brings together apparently incompatible objects to form new and larger unities that are both quietly provocative and ingeniously beautiful. In 2004 she presented a work that consisted of an iron that had left a kind of snail-track of brown tape behind it. In the installation Magnusson’s iron is no longer primarily an article for everyday use, its symbolic value has been changed by its contextual relocation in a manner that is humorous and poetic. Magnusson’s works are not just about particular objects; her work also calls into question ideas about space and its relation to art and the viewer.

Jenny Magnusson

Born 1970 in Stockholm.
Lives and works in Gothenburg.

Education

1995–2000
Valand School of Fine Arts, Gothenburg

Selected solo exhibitions

2001
Galleri 54, Gothenburg

2003
Galleri Box, Gothenburg

2004
Valentin Byhr, Gothenburg

Selected group exhibitions

2001
Milano Europa 2000, Milano

2001
IASPIS Open studios, Stockholm

2003
Modern Talking, Enkehuset, Stockholm

Selected bibliography

Michael Olofsson, Göteborgs-Posten, 2003.

Ulf Thuland, Dagens Industri, 2001.

Gavin Jantes, Milano Europa 2000 the end of the century. The seeds of the future, 2001.