• photo courtesy of Albin Dahlström / Moderna Museet

    An Interview With Curator Matilda Olof-Ors

    Written by Josie McNeill by Josie McNeill

    A large sculpture composed of stacked wooden logs greets visitors as they enter the Moderna Museet’s “Pink Sails – Swedish Modernism in the Moderna Museet’s Collection,” exhibit that was unveiled on June 17. The sculpture, “Horizon of Me(aning)” by Carola Grahn, is a part-performance piece that, per the artist’s instructions, must be privately assembled in the exhibit while having a conversation about mental health.

    “Horizon of Me(aning)” speaks on how nature is animate, and although it is from 2015 originally, the work's theme of trust in nature connects to many of the other pieces in the exhibit from the 20th century. 'Pink Sails' explores this theme, along with other progress and changes in society in this age, through the lens of modernist artwork.

    ‘Pink Sails,” curated by Matilda Olof-Ors, is a part of the museet’s new exhibition program in which each exhibit aims to explore art historical contexts instead of simply showcasing the chosen pieces chronologically.

    The exhibit draws its title from Ragnar Sandberg’s 1934 painting of the same name. For Olof-Ors, she was inspired to name the exhibit after this painting because “the lyrical and open character of the title also speaks to a strand of Swedish art at the time that existed side by side with the more well-known modernist narratives of transition and progression.”

    Can you start off by just giving me an overview of the exhibit?
    It's based mainly on works from the Moderna Museet’s collection and covers the period from 1900s to the 1940s. I’ve been interested to see how the very drastic and rapid changes in society, of course, also reached the realm of art. You find it in both the artists’ quest for new motifs, and in the motifs themselves, capturing the new society-–everything from the fast growing cities to the industrial sites. But also I think it’s reflected in how the artists’ constantly strive to push the boundaries in search for new expressions, as well as in the artists that were rather turning their gaze inwards, using inspiration from fantasy, from fairy tales, from literature, and from sort of a non-visual world. It is also interesting that these tendencies exist side by side; it’s not like one thing or the other.

    What was your process of curating the exhibit? Did you come up with the idea first and then find paintings to fit in or were you inspired by the collection of paintings?
    The museum has a fantastic collection of works from these periods, so it’s been most inspiring to go back and look into that to explore. As the exhibition is based on our collection, limitations are of course inevitable, and I have included a few loans from neighboring institutions like National Museum and an institution in Uppsala, Bror Hjorths Hus, The Hilma af Klint Foundation and the Swedish Radio. The curation process, of course, has involved the compilation of a few monographic rooms, and also outlining some more thematic contexts.

    How did you choose the sub themes for the exhibit?
    It’s been a combination of posing questions and exploring: What art works, artists, and themes do we have in the museum’s collection? What sort of stories can we tell? What is interesting and relevant today? I think this period is interesting to look at now, almost 100 years later. Today, there’s another war going on in Europe. We experience very drastic changes in society, still going faster and faster as well. And I think we again gaze at nature as a way of searching for solutions to the challenges that we face today. To conclude, some prevailing themes in the early and mid 1900s are still very present or reoccurring today.

    I was gonna ask you to talk about that a little more. How do you think ‘Pink Sails’ is still relevant in today’s world?
    I would say that history is always relevant. We both get to know the history and get to reflect on contemporary society. As I mentioned earlier, many of the things that we are facing in the show are also very present today.

    Was there a piece of exhibit that stood out to you as being particularly impactful?
    One of my favorites is that wall [pointing]. I really like the texture, and the combination of the textile work by Anna Casparsson and the Vera Nilsson painting. I think they grasp some of the atmosphere that I was aiming for in this room. But also, I do have so many favorites.

    And then is there like a central message you want people to take away that are visiting the exhibit?
    Not particularly. It’s more that I hope that everyone would see and find something that they could relate to in the exhibition. And then did it come together the way you initially visualized it? In a way, yes. I think it’s so interesting working with contexts and ideas that you could start at one end, and then you realize you end up somewhere else once you sort of set the tone.

    And then how do you think Swedish modernism has evolved since the 20th century from when these paintings are from?
    That’s such a long story to tell. Of course, history is always changing. I would say the way we look at these paintings now is totally different than how they were perceived in the 1920s, or even in the 1970s, or the 1980s. I would argue that our relation to what we see is always the present one – both the artworks and how we look at them, but also how we interpret them is in a totally different way today than in the past

  • OMxAasthma

    Written by Jahwanna Berglund

    Oscar Magnuson teams up with Electronic duo Aasthma
    In an unexpected collaboration where eyewear meets music.

    Founded in 2006, contemporary art, design, fashion and music are all influential on Oscar Magnuson’s expression.
    The OM collection is defined by its expressive yet pure and balanced design and subtle palette of monochrome colours. All frames, made from eco-friendly acetate, are handmade by highly skilled craftspeople who carry out the many stages of the production in the company’s Italian factory. Sunglasses are fitted with premium high precision optical glass lenses.

    How was the idea of the collaboration with Aasthma born?
    We met through friends in common and started to talk about doing a project together. We directly felt we had good vibes and wanted to do a project together involving both design of frames and creation of music. It’s always interesting to mix creativity with people that work in a completely different creative field. The idea was to work with all senses; design, music and visual expression to create a limited experience.

    Can you describe the collection and the inspiration behind it?
    The frame used in this project is one of our favorites called Gaff, it’s a futuristic unisex frame form the core collection. We were inspired by the visual expression of the new Aasthma album and have chosen a unique futuristic blue color and silver/purpled mirrored sun lens for this project. To complete the project we are using sustainable materials such as Bio-acetate and Bio-Nylon for the lens and the box is produced in Sweden with a new eco-friendly way of cutting cardboard.

    In what ways does music play a big role in your creative process and what music inspires you?
    For me personally music is probably the biggest inspiration of my design. When I design a collection, I always listen to music and nearly always what I listen too will set the mood of the collection.

    If I listen to classic music, it might come out softer and if I listen to electronic music, it might come out sharper. It is bit hard to tell exactly how it effects the design, but I know it does.

    What brought you into designing eyewear?
    I have a master’s degree in industrial design and have always been interested in production, design and culture. I think eyewear is a perfect mix between fashion and product design. I have realized working with eyewear design for 17 years that we are actually more in medicine than fashion as the frames are mostly used to correct your eyesight. That is why in the end I think my background as an industrial designer have come to serve me well as you learn a lot about the interaction between body and product.

    If you wouldn't design eyewear what would you see yourself doing?
    I would work in the field of product design in some way for sure. Having run a design/production business now for 10 years I have come to find design strategy very interesting and would probably work in that field.

    But to be honest running an eyewear brand lets me work with all visual expressions like in the Aasthma x OM project, so I really do not see myself starting something outside “Oscar Magnuson”. I think we will just keep on exploring how far we can push the OM expression in other creative fields.

    www.oscarmagnuson.com

  • images courtsy of Pitti Uomo

    Pitti Uomo 104 and The Case Against Fashionable Sportswear

    Written by Philip Warkander by pari

    A couple of months ago, I was having coffee with an old friend, currently living in Switzerland. She told me of her 16-year-old son’s emerging interest in fashion. He travels regularly to nearby  Milan to visit traditional tailors and menswear shops that have been in business for decades, selling traditional haberdasheries. Obviously, as a teenager he had limited means, but what he had, he spent on conservative clothing. I was reminded of this story when recently visiting this summer’s edition of Pitti Uomo in Florence.

    The menswear fashion event has a reputation of being a platform for very unfortunate fashion choices among some of its male visitors. Many years ago, exhibitors would on occasion go out for a cigarette. Leaning against the rails, smoking, and chatting with each other while fashionably dressed, they became the object of early street style-photographers. It didn’t take long until people started to travel to Pitti Uomo in the hopes of having their picture taken. Such a photo could help make them famous for their sense of style and thus had a potential economic value (in the world of influencing). In order to get the attention of the photographers, these aspiring men dressed outlandishly in garish outfits, hoping that their clothes would be loud enough to go viral. 

    The male peacocks, strutting slowly back and forth in the hope of someone snapping their photo, has since become an unfortunate Pitti Uomo-cliché, a caricature of the narcissistic tendencies so often associated with being interested in fashion. I have visited the fair on quite a few occasions, and before the COVID-19 pandemic, sports-inspired streetwear fashion was clearly an important part of this ugly trend. Now, it is all but wiped out. No chunky Balenciaga sneakers, no college shirts with large prints. Instead, the style among the fair’s visitors is dressed up, in a casual yet refined way.

    In 2005, Riccardo Tisci was appointed creative director at Givenchy. He transformed the French luxury brand, spearheading the new trend of merging fashion and sportswear. Shorts over leggings, and T-shirts with applications of pearls and lace, became an integral part of menswear. Tisci worked for Givenchy until 2017 (when he left for Burberry). This means that for someone like my friend’s son, born two years after Tisci’s Givenchy takeover, sportswear was the trend of his childhood. Like most people, as he grew older, he naturaly wanted to change his appearance, emphasizing the difference between what had been the style of his childhood and his current adolescent self. And as he grew up in the era of fashionable sportswear, he naturally turned to a more traditional aesthetics; well-fitting suits, exclusive socks, handmake shoes. To him, this is exciting and new, a welcome contrast to the sportswear he has been surrounded by all his life. 

    The example of my friend’s son is anecdotal, but all around me at Pitti Uomo, I saw the same trend multiplied. There were no traces of the sportswear megatrend, so fashionably only a few years ago. Obviously, not everyone had turned to the more traditional style of my friend’s son – I also saw versions of the relaxed Côte d’Azur-lifestyle championed by Jacquemus, a few still sporting the Belgian deconstructed look of the 1990s, as well as plenty of Prada labels – but it was clear that in this crowd of trend-conscious men, an invested interest in sneakers or wearing your training gear to a dinner party is today a clear faux-pas. 

    Our understanding of current events is determined by where we are in life. For those older, it can be difficult to understand why streetwear seems so unfashionable to the younger generation. But for those who have never known anything else than sneakers and T-shirts, a suit can seem a more radical option. And so, fashion continues to change, like a pendulum that swings from side to side.

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