Overview
Stephen Friedman Gallery is pleased to present a recent body of work by Swedish artist, Mamma Andersson. Steeped in art historical and folkloric references, Mamma Andersson’s paintings employ uncanny juxtapositions and disorientating composition to conjure a dream-like atmosphere.
This group of paintings was first presented in Andersson’s current two-person touring exhibition with Tal R entitled ‘About Hill’. The works were made especially for this exhibition which opened at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark in October 2022 and then toured to Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden from May to October 2023. They will rejoin the exhibition for the final leg of the tour on 12 November where the exhibition will open at Museum MORE in Gorssel, Netherlands and run until 25 February 2024.
The paintings will be on view in London from Monday 9 - Saturday 14 October around the corner at 11 Old Burlington Street in Mayfair.
Mamma Andersson’s work draws on commonplace motifs merged with filmic imagery to create a dreamlike and disquieting atmosphere. This body of work is especially inspired by the iconic Swedish painter, C.F. Hill (1849-1911) and his mysterious pictorial world following his schizophrenia diagnosis at the age of 28. Combining textured brushstrokes, graphic lines and a varied colour palette, these paintings demonstrate Andersson’s striking range of painterly techniques.
Stephen Friedman Gallery is pleased to present a recent body of work by Swedish artist, Mamma Andersson. Steeped in art historical and folkloric references, Mamma Andersson’s paintings employ uncanny juxtapositions and disorientating composition to conjure a dream-like atmosphere.
Installation Views: Mamma Andersson & Tal R at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg, Denmark, 2022
‘Each of the processes I use to make a painting holds the traces of my previous work, like the annual rings on a tree. While you remain now at the last ring, you carry all the previous ones within you.'
‘I work […] slowly and in bursts, marked by very intense periods followed by not working at all. I place myself in a state of a revolving door to my absolute inner self – a mixture of desire and shame, but mostly desire. You want to get into a state where you no longer think, but just follow and surprise yourself. I sometimes wish my process was easier – that it was as light as a feather, that I was not so anchored to narrative, that colour and shape could stand on its own.’
Installation Views: Mamma Andersson & Tal R at Malmö Art Museum, Sweden, 2023
‘I began painting Rodin’s sculptures – I made them my own.’
- Mamma Andersson
Cristello, Stephanie, ‘Realm of Whispers Interview – Mamma Andersson and Tal R on Carl Fredrik Hill’ in Tal R & Mamma Andersson About Hill, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Malmö Konstmuseum & Museum MORE, 2022 (p. 78).
‘I was thinking about the gesture of sitting; furniture has from time to time been dominant in my work, adopting different symbolism depending on what I wanted to convey. The specific chairs (länsstolar) I depict in […] Conversation – Theatre (2022)are powerful in themselves – after several centuries, they still come and go at auction houses. They find new places within homes or museum[s], just as some artworks continue to tease and attract generation after generation.’
- Mamma Andersson
Cristello, Stephanie, ‘Realm of Whispers Interview – Mamma Andersson and Tal R on Carl Fredrik Hill’ in Tal R & Mamma Andersson About Hill, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Malmö Konstmuseum & Museum MORE, 2022 (p. 88).
Installation Views: Mamma Andersson, Humdrum Days at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark, 2021
Artist Biography
Mamma Andersson was born 1962 in Luleå, Sweden. She lives and works in Stockholm.
Inspired by filmic imagery, theatre sets, and period interiors, Andersson’s compositions are often dreamlike and expressive. Her subject matter revolves around melancholic landscapes and nondescript, domestic interiors. While stylistic references include turn-of-the-century Nordic figurative painting, folk art, and local or contemporary vernacular, Andersson’s evocative use of pictorial space and her juxtapositions of thick paint and textured washes are uniquely her own.
A major solo exhibition by the artist opened at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark in June 2021, accompanied by an illustrated catalogue. The show surveyed fifteen years of Andersson’s practice and featured a specially created series of new paintings. The artist’s solo exhibition ‘Memory Banks’ opened in October 2018 at Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio. She won the Daniel And Florence Guerlain Drawing Prize 2018, a prestigious award honouring a living European artist. Andersson was a co-curator of the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil in the same year.