Astrid Svangren is a Swedish painter based in Copenhagen since over 15 years. She explores classical painter’s questions, such as flatness, depth, the materiality of the paint, figuration and abstraction. Colour plays an exceptional role, used as language, metaphor, and material. Text and literature also plays a vital role, as a source of inspiration as well as being part of the works as written sentences used as longer poetic titles or fragments that are displayed in conjunction with the actual paintings. Svangren’s paintings are characterized by their spatial extensions where sculptural elements and objects find its way into the space of the beholder. Materials such as textile, plastic, objects, flowers, plants and other organic material such as pollen and fragrance, paper of different quality are recurrent. Recently, Svangren started to respond to the sites she’s either working in (studio space) or exhibiting her works in. Using her direct sourrounding as cues for formal decisions and improvised explorations. This new working process of hers also involves collecting materials on site responding to the materiality of the direct surroundings. This new path will be developed further at her stay at Malongen.
URL:s where works and information about the guest can be found:
www.annabohmangallery.com/astrid-svangren-2020
Besides developing her artistic process, Astrid Svangren will also create a site-specific artwork for the third summer exhibition at Mörby Gård Art (Mörby Gård Konst), taking place in August 2022. The exhibition is planned in collaboration with Camilla Larsson as a guest curator. It will evolve around the book L'été 80 (Sommaren 1980, Ellerströms förlag, 2019) by author and filmmaker Marguerite Duras. The book was released 1980 and it is a compilation of ten columns she wrote that summer for the French newspaper Libération. The exhibition will gather a group of Swedish and international artists, from different generations, and use the proximity to the Baltic Sea as a way to connect to larger questions of political, environmental and social concerns with artworks that shares a material sensibility. Just like Duras formulated her book as a way to combine a formally charged language with an ethic gaze at the world 1980, the exhibition seeks to embrace aesthetically strong works that also address topics of existential concerns.
Mörby Gård Konst is a grange located on Ornö in the Stockholm archipelago. It is an artist run initiative with the aim to host public art events. One focus point is sculptural practices in the most open sense. Mörby Gård consists of a former barn turned into a studio/gallery space (35 m2) and a 2,5 km long pathway that gives access to sculptural works exhibited in the forest. The environment with the grange, guest house, forest and open fields, and the closeness to the seashore of the Baltic Sea, are important conditions, qualities and infrastructure for the art events. Additionally, the location in Haninge municipality (Stockholm county), both rural and urban, with a diversified population, is also a significant context. The activities at Mörby Gård are small scale and run independently, but in close dialogue with the institutional life of museums, kunsthalles, artist run initiatives, and galleries in Stockholm and beyond. The artistic board of Mörby Gård are the artists Alexandra Jacobson Larsson, Lotta Törnroth, Simon Blanck and Natasja Loutchko.