Facts: Spring Salon 2023
Where: Liljevachl Art Gallery in Stockholm.
When: February 24 to April 23.
Featuring: 159 artists selected from 4,135 applicants. Anyone over the age of 18 is welcome to apply. Of this year’s admits, 89 are women and 70 are men. The average age of those admitted is 52 years.
The first Spring Salon was shown in 1921.
A huge black drop falls to the floor. Lusdal artist Jini Hedblom’s sculpture “Mahsa” hangs heavily from the ceiling and is named after 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini who was arrested by morality police in Tehran who thought she did not cover her hair properly. Her death after the arrest started a storm wave of demonstrations, and is now also captured in Vårsalongen.
“It’s a tear of horsetail that floats over the floor, very equilibristic,” says deputy art gallery director Isak Nilson, new chairman of the Spring Salon’s jury.
“The tunnel has become their home” by Charlotta Grunewald.
A record number of people – over 4,000 people – applied to this year’s salon at Liljevalchs in Stockholm, which, as always, is open to both trained artists and self-taught artists. Together with the artist Jockum Nordström, who is currently having his own exhibition in the art gallery’s new extension, and the art historian Isabella Nilsson, president of the Royal Academy for the Free Arts, he has selected 298 works of art for a salon that is at least partially characterized by some kind of Nordic melancholy but also accommodates the turbulence of the outside world.
Woman in rag socks
Charlotte Grunewald’s textile art with motifs from wartime Ukraine is shown next door to the tear in a horse. With needle, thread and fabric, she depicts the sadness of an old woman in rag socks outside her bombed-out house. Grunewald has embroidered the tormented facial expressions of people who took shelter in the subway.
“It’s done very tenderly and empathetically,” says Isak Nilson.
Júlia Lobosco from Gothenburg instead tackles a large Brazilian corruption scandal that was revealed after a police intervention under the cover name “car wash”. With her fingers, Júlia Lobosco draws the faces of those accused of corruption in the dark dirt of a white minibus, which she then rinses clean with a harsh high-pressure washer. The faces linger in the car paint – Lobosco’s video work tells of a revelation that gave birth to hope but also depressing insights into a dirty system, reasons Isak Nilson.
Josefin Wedel’s “Summer Landscape” is one of Vårsalong’s depictions of nature as idyll.
But in terms of motifs, it is rather nature that is the main theme of Spring Salon, among other things in Annika Andersson’s woven lava stones bound together by green-yellow yarn, a kind of stylized Icelandic meadow.
Robin and nutcracker
Josefin Wedel shows her sheer “Summer Landscape”, a woodcut and collage with beautiful plants in early summer greenery. The salon’s oldest artist, 89-year-old Per Torvald, has carved and painted birds such as robins and nuthatches, which he has arranged on carefully selected pieces of wood.
— -It’s all very sensitive, says Isak Nilson.
Ella Azcárate Lindblom’s “Little Old Man” came to Liljevalch’s spring salon wrapped and packed in a worn matchbox.
Björn Ahlberg and Johan Sandler’s “Bögberget” in bronze represents rocks and refers to the Brunnsviken in Stockholm where homosexuals went to be able to meet without being stopped by the police.
But the nature motifs also convey Nordic melancholy and loneliness, emphasizes Isak Nilson. An example is Mattias Fagerholm’s etchings of seed pines left behind on the clearing, majestic solitaires that have a long way to the nearest neighbor.
— They stare out over the devastation.
In Leena Jokela Hemse’s pictures of deserted small grass football pitches, both total desolation and longing for people and activity can be found.
Worn matchbox
At Vårsalongen there is also Lego art, AI-generated spacescapes and what may be one of the world’s smallest wooden men, delivered to Liljevalchs in a worn little matchbox.
Which work best sums up the present in 2023 depends on the viewer. Maybe it’s the crowd in Svetlana Hällsten’s eventful collage “Everyone’s war against everyone”, a kind of battlefield with people and animals?
Isak Nilson instead points to a tapestry of the social media thumbs up. “Okay” is the name of Lucas Willman’s tufted emoji in acrylic yarn.
— One might ask where this humorous tone comes from? Maybe it is like a protection against the darkness around us. Although we don’t feel that everything will be perfect, maybe it is a little like the title of this work “Okay”. Perhaps that’s the meaning of a thumbs up in 2023 – “let’s get it right”.
Vårsalon 2023 is shown February 24 to April 23.
Lucas Willman has made his wall hanging “Okej” in tufted acrylic yarn.