2011

CITY OF SCULPTURES

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Sculpture tourSJoin a guided tour amongst sculptures in Borås. Tours start at BoråsTourist Center and finish at the Pinocchio sculpture one hour later.

Times: 21st May until 17th September 2011Tuesday 18.00 pm Wednesday 15.00 pm Saturday 14.00 pm

BoråS tourISt ceNterAddress: Österlånggatan 1-3Opening hours: Weekdays 10.00 am-18.00 pm, Saturday 10.00 am -14.00 pm.Info +46 33 35 70 90

Borås MuseuM of Modern ArTAddress: Schélegatan 4Opening hours June - August:Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 11.00 am-17.00 pm, Thursday 11.00 am -19.00 pmInfo +46 33 35 76 72

The sculptures are placed between Allégatan 67 (J. Dine at Borås Tidning) and Al-légatan 1 (S. Henry, L. Englund at Högskolan), through Anna Lindhs park (C.F. Reu-terswärd), Södra Torget (C. Gyllenhammar), Stadsparken (B. Venet, A-K Furu- nes, P. Svensson, M.L De Geer, C. Hake mfl), Sandwalls plats (T. Cragg), Grand Hotel (F.Stella),Knalletorget (F.Wretman,A.Knöppel), Resecentrum (Bigert&Bergström, K. Karlsson), Stora Torget (E. Hild, O. Brandqvist, R. Nonas). Throughout the sum-mer you can see Olle Brandqvist work on his sculpture “Vad är då en människa” outside the tourist office.

Sculpture SiteS

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Borås city of sculpturesThe municipality of Borås (Borås Stad) has an across-the-board responsi-bility for lending aesthetic values to the public space, for creating well-being and a feel-good factor amongst its citizens. It also has a duty to enhance the possibilities - through art - of enabling residents to feel in-creased affinity with their local environment.

Artistic adornment lends character and individuality to buildings, streets and squares. In time, artworks become visible historical monuments. The art that is created today will, in future, like tree rings, gauge the society that we were involved in creating. For this reason, it is important that contemporary art is prioritised in the acquisition of art for public spaces.

Art can give expression to, and create identification through tying into, local traditions and distinctive features. Artworks can become orientation points in the urban landscape and meeting venues for people of all ages. Furthermore, art can contribute to creating solidarity and well-being, to nurture a desire from the individual to help care for the community space. Good public art can, moreover, create economic growth through the agen-cy of those companies that consciously choose to establish themselves in environments where public art creates a positive spirit and a creative milieu.

However, art in the public sphere should not need to justify itself in other than aesthetic terms. A meaningful artwork arouses questions and feelings in the viewer rather than offering familiar or predictable answers. Artistic adornment should be accessible to as many people as possible. This is done through investing in embellishments where the flow of the public is on a large scale and where as many citizens as possible encoun-ter art in the public sphere.

Hasse PerssonDirector of Borås Art Museum

WhollyEntity - anything having existence - Living or Nonliving

Eva HildBorn 1966 in Borås, SwedenLives and works in Sparsör, SwedenEva Hild is a sculptor who graduated from HDK, the School of Design and Crafts, in Göteborg. With her organic sculptures she has made an impact on both the national and international art scene. Hild is currently represented in museums and private collections all over the world. Eva Hild’s ceramic sculptures with their delicate forms and sensitive materi-als have not previously been suited to an outdoor climate.

With Wholly however, which is cast in aluminium, Hild’s work takes on a larger format. Wholly, four metres in length, can be seen as Eva Hild’s most important outdoor sculpture to date.

- Effect, Influence, Pressure... These words have been the starting point

for my work in which I shape an emotional state in a sculptural form. Using thin material I build up volumes whereby the material is shaped in curves and movements, a kind of shell exposed to strong forces. The

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shape reflects different levels of inner and outer pressure, the inside is transformed to outside. The design is based on what is absent, the empty space on the one hand. On the other hand, it relates to the mass, the material that in a thin layer runs in a meandering, interlinking mo-vement.

Donation: Wholly is a donation from a number of foundations and com-panies as well as a grant from Borås Stad (2010)

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Stabil

Lars EnglundBorn 1933 in Stockholm, SwedenWorks in Jonstorp and Stockholm, Sweden

Over a period of almost half a century Lars Englund has created some 40 or so public sculptures in Sweden; justly he is called the Nestor of Sweden’s sculptural world. With Lars Englund’s new, five-metre high black-painted aluminium sculpture Stabil, central Borås has now acqui-red a new landmark at the crossing of Yxhammarsgatan and Allégatan.

- I have always viewed Lars Englund as a genuine avant-garde artist, someone who is always keen to move forward and show us something new and, at the same time, to see a resonance in history further back than the modernism of the 20th century, writes Museum Director Lars Nittve in his forward to the extensive catalogue of Lars Englund’s major exhibition at Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art) in Stockholm 2005.

Lars Englund has always gone his own way as an artist in respect of natural abstraction, concretism and minimalism. In the differences, in the borderland; this is where Lars Englund shapes his artistic language.

Lars Englund himself is keen to highlight the role of the process, the importance of the conceptual stage and the work of finding suitable tools to enable the shaping of a unique expression.

Purchased: Borås Stad (2010)

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Walking to Borås

Jim DineBorn 1935 in Cincinnati, USAMainly active in USA

With Jim Dine’s Walking to Borås the town has received a world class donation. The nine-metre high sculpture is one of the artist’s most im-portant works and shows, once again, that Jim Dine is one of America’s foremost artists who makes use of different media such as painting, performance, drawing, poetry, book design, graphics, photography and sculpture. With Pinocchio, Jim Dine has also expanded his range of mo-tifs where previously the Heart, Death’s Head, Tools and Venus have previously been the artist’s favourite motif.

-I see Pinocchio as a metaphor for art, Jim Dine has stated. That from a tree stump it is possible to create art which move people from one generation to the next.

Purchased: Borås Stad (2010)

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Tribus

Erik RorenBorn 1972 in Stockholm, SwedenWorks in Stockholm, Sweden

Erik Roren is a sculptor who attended the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Roren is interested in the relationship between Grafiti/Street Art and Public Art. Street Art is frequently seen as sabotage and the visual experience tends to take second place. With his project Tribus, Roren now wishes to create a positive experience of this art form and attract the public to interact with something that in its original form is illegal.

One of the project’s challenges has been to find alternatives for sculp-ture in the public sphere. Tribus is a sculptural stroke, a mass-produced object for the street. The 50 objects are deployed in Borås during May and function as a temporary public decoration. Form and colour are so strong that a signature feels superfluous; instead it is the expression which is the signature and link between the objects.

Tribus has previously appeared in Oslo, Lillehammer, Risor (Norway), Sydney, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Venice, Foshan (China) and Nyköping (Sweden) as a feature in the street environment. This is the first oc-casion that Tribus is displayed in collaboration with an established art institution.

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Hani

Anne-Karin FurunesBorn 1961 in Trondheim, Norway Lives and works in Trondheim, Norway

Anne-Karin Furunes is one of the Nordic region’s most highly esteemed artists of her generation. To begin with, she was a painter but during re-cent years she has become most widely known through her photographs on steel or aluminium plate where the motif is ’developed’ through the surface being perforated with holes of varying sizes.

The photographs she uses in her art are actually photos from photo libraries or also, as in this case, a photo of Hani, a 2x3.5 m. large portrait that forms part of a series of large format photos, taken in a street milieu. Passers-by, unknown people to the artist, were asked if they wished to participate in the artistic project. Hani consented to the photograph on condition that she was able to wear her veil in the picture. The perforation makes the portrait appear taken at a distance and to dissolve when the viewer gets closer to the photograph.

www.gallerik.com

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Dogon and Upside Down

Claes HakeBorn 1945 in Mölndal, Sweden Lives and works in Göteborg, Sweden

Claes Hake is most well known for his monumental granite sculptures that are displayed in many parts of the world. The artist seldom speaks of the reasons behind his works. It is not hard to realize that sculptural magic is involved with the red granite blocks rising up as a gateway to eternity in the sculpture Dogon that adorns the western section of Stads-parken park. This work is complemented with Upside Down (2008), stra-tegically placed beside the Viskan River.

- Unlike many other sculptors who work in stone, Claes Hake has un-derstood the importance of retaining the material’s inherent potential. Hake knows that stone, like fish, finds fulfilment where the raw material is released instead of spoiled; so has art critic Mårten Castenfors written about Claes Hake’s art.

http://hem.spray.se/claes.hake/

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Non-Violence

Carl Fredrik ReuterswärdBorn 1934 in Stockholm, SwedenActive in Rydebäck, Sweden and Bussigny, Switzerland

Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd was one of Sweden’s most prominent artists on the international art scene during the second half of the 20th century. For a wider public he is most known for his work Non-Violence, featuring the Knotted Gun.

The idea for the sculpture was engendered by the death of John Len-non, murdered in 1980 on the street outside his home in Manhattan. Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd had met John Lennon and Yoko Ono as early as 1969 in Montreux in Switzerland and the murder of Lennon gave rise to a memorial. But instead of a monument to John Lennon, the knot-

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ted revolver has become an international symbol of non-violence. The sculpture Non-Violence was first placed outside the UN building in New York, where it was inaugurated in 1988 by the then Secretary-General, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar.

Since then, the sculpture has been reproduced and placed in many cities the world over. Here in Borås, in Anna Lindh’s Park, a knot-tied pistol is displayed. Previously it has stood in the artist’s own garden at Bussigny, outside Lausanne, in Switzerland.

This sculpture only exists in one example and is therefore a unique work worthy of honouring the memory of Sweden’s murdered Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh (2003).

Purchased: Borås Stad (2011)

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Bodhi

Fredrik WretmanBorn in Stockholm 1953, SwedenLives and works in Stockholm, Sweden

Fredrik Wretman was one of three artists invited to compete for the em-bellishment of Knalletorget in Borås. Knalle refers to the Peddler which is now a symbol of Borås. Wretman won the competition with his work that was installed here during August 2004. A meditative and self-reflective calm rests in the expectant Buddha, Bodhi, which in Sanskrit means en-lightenment. Bodhi bears an echo of our times. The sculpture in bronze was cast in Thailand and conveyed here in 2004, the same year as the Tsunami catastrophe. Bodhi encourages the viewer to stop and reflect. Nowadays it occupies a rightful place in the town.

www.fredrikwretman.se

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222,5° ARC x 12 and 223,5° ARC x 10 Bernar VenetBorn 1941 in Alpes de Haute-Provence, France Mainly active in New York since 1966

Bernard Venet is one of Europe’s most high-profile sculptors. This sum-mer Venet is present with the works 222,5° Arc x12 and 223,5° Arc x 10. The artist sees it as two free sculptures that cannot be explained mathematically.

- Coincidences sets out the rules of the game; the sculptures may be seen as abstract expressionistic, non-representational and purely musi-cal art experiences, says Venet, who liberates his sculptures from both moderation and composition.

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Borås Surround

Richard NonasBorn in USA 1936Lives and works in New York, USA

Richard Nonas works with minimalist sculpture whereby simple, almost artless objects are characterised by a bare expressive quality. In Borås we find his work on Stora Torget. The square is a meeting place, a place of worship and a place for entertainment. Here he has reduced the mee-ting to a closed circle.

These twelve stone seats provide a venue for different types of function, enable one to check the time or just offer the passer-by a place in the sun. Richard Nonas, as sculptor and social anthropologist, is fascinated by human encounters. The seats were installed in connection with Borås Art Museum’s exhibition ”Carl von ...” in 1995. They were so well received by the people of Borås that the Town Council decided to buy them.

www.lawrencemarkey.com

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Mate Hunting Marianne Lindberg De GeerBorn 1946 in Stockholm, SwedenLives and works in Stockholm, Sweden

Marianne Lindberg De Geer is artist, dramatist and debater. But it is as one of Sweden’s most prominent sculptors that she occupies a self-evident place in Borås – and in this festival of sculpture.

The inspiration for this work comes from Alice in Wonderland. Here she has once again shown her talent for the unexpected. With a sense of humour and a hint of provocation, Marianne Lindberg De Geer questions the power structures of the art world.

www.mldg.se

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Kapsel

Kerstin Dahl-NorénBorn in Borås 1955, SwedenLives and works in Borås, Sweden

- In my artistic world, Nature is frequently the starting point, the eternal ecocycle and the dynamic of contradictions.

Kerstin Dahl-Norén’s work comprises an austere, concrete artistic idiom both in painting and in sculpture. Her contribution is a two-metre high sculpture in red Bohus granite. She herself describes it as a dried seed capsule shaped in heavy granite. A closed, swelling form, a capsule with a 900 million year old life. Kerstin Dahl-Norén conveys a lightness in the heavy, a softness in the hard, a movement in the stationary while raw surfaces are frequently contrasted with the finished.

www.dahl-noren.se

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Tornado

Bigert&BergströmMats Bigert & Lars BergströmBorn 1965 and 1962 respectively in Stockholm, SwedenLive and work in Stockholm, Sweden

Bigert&Bergström have been inseparable friends since 1985. To start with they mainly worked on performance art that later developed into sculptural and spatial installations.

With materials and ideas borrowed from the world of science among others, Bigert&Bergström highlight urgent issues that show that our age as one of rupture. They make use of humour and revealing facts within an innovative and artistic context. The sculpture Tornado (2008) is a work that is intended to honour the textile industry history of Borås and has been placed on permanent display at Resecentrum (Travel Centre) to welcome visitors to Borås.

www.bigertbergstrom.com

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Ute

Charlotte GyllenhammarBorn in Göteborg 1963, SwedenLives and works in Stockholm, Sweden

Charlotte Gyllenhammar is one of our featured sculptors whose work has attracted most fascination. She returns to the subject of falling mo-vement, the borders between outer and inner space, the reverse per-spective, memory, threat and loss of freedom. In her art, Charlotte Gyl-lenhammar has frequently portrayed the exposed situation of children in contemporary society.

The sculpture Ute symbolises a state rather than an idea. The child, who does not appear to be more than four years old, is dressed in clo-thes that are too big, chunky and ungainly but dressed nevertheless with care. Gyllenhammar believes that when the production process of her work is complete the sculpture no longer belongs to her, it belongs to each and everyone who looks at it i.e. it belongs to all of us!

www.department.nu

Yin-Yang

Arne JonesBorn 1914 in Borgsjö, Sweden Died 1976 in Sollentuna, Sweden

Arne Jones has numerous public works to his name. One of the more prominent and controversial is Spiral åtbörd (1961), an abstract creation that twists around its axle, placed at Kristinaplatsen outside Norrköping Art Museum.

Arne Jones frequently focused on issues of duplicity and the interplay between nature and culture, displacement and proximity. Jones wished to create a synthesis of contradictions. One of the best examples indeed is Yin-Yang, found in a number of places including Borås. His point of departure was the human body and the laws of nature.

Arne Jones also started to interest himself in the ancient Chinese wis-dom enshrined in Taoism. According to this tradition, Yin-Yang builds on the interchange between the female principle Yin and the male prin-ciple Yang where the female principle stands for body, earth and dark whereas the male principle corresponds to intellect, heaven and light.

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Gestalter

Anna Stake Born in 1971 in Uppsala, SwedenLives and works in Stockholm, Sweden

- Sculpture is a language that I use to communicate. I frequently work on remaking symbols so as in this way to get close to ideas about how it is to be a person.

Anna Stake works with art in the public space. She employs a de- scaled artistic idiom, where the interplay between gravitation and weight plays a central role. Here she participates with the sculpture Ge-stalter (2008) in hand-forged steel. These three metre high ’pins’ move gracefully along the quayside beside Väveribolaget’s former office buil-ding. In 2003 she exhibited at Borås Art Museum which resulted in a purchase for Sjöboskolan; Venus has left the building.

http://annastake.se/

Knallen

Arvid Knöppel Born in Luleå, Sweden 1892-1970

Arvid Knöppel’s Knallen (The Peddler) formerly stood on Torggatan, out-side the old Swedish Post Office building. In May 2009 this symbol of Borås as a centre of trade and commerce landed up at the entry to the town centre on coming from the Central Station/Travel Center. It is now, moreover, in the vicinity of Knalletorget (Peddler Square). For 400 years the peddler was a familiar sight on the roads of Sweden, selling handicraft, textiles, wood products and forgings. These peddlers even developed their own secret language that was called Månsing.

The artist Arvid Knöppel is also numbered among Sweden’s foremost portrayers of animals, most well-known for his drawings and sculptu-res. Another of Knöppel’s sculptures, Lodjuret (The Lynx), can be seen in Stadsparken.

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Declination

Tony CraggBorn 1949 in Liverpool, England Active in Wuppertal, Germany

Tony Cragg is regarded by many critics as the Henry Moore of our time. With respect shown to the different materials that the artist chooses to work with, Tony Cragg is able to display a series of different examples of his expressive idiom. The yellow-painted bronze sculpture Declination which, since 2007 decorates Sandwalls Plats belongs to the series Early Forms and is considered by art critics as one of Cragg’s most important works.

- As poets make use of the word and the painter of the paints on his palette to express himself, so the sculptor uses different materials as an extension of his own creativity, explains Tony Cragg.

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Ärr

Lars Gustaf Andersson Born 1949 in Borås, SwedenActive in Borås, Sweden

Lars Gustaf Andersson works in a number of different techniques. The artwork Ärr ® (Scar) floats on the surface of the Viskan River at the Tea-terbron bridge and is shaped as a disk in stainless steel with neon light. ”®” clarifies a trade mark that is registered and protected from infringe-ment, reproduction or copying. Lars Gustaf’s view is that the Viskan Ri-ver has a strong symbolic value and identity for the people of Borås. The river winds its way through the town and becomes the property of those who live there. Ärr ® is also a result of an open wound right in the centre of Borås – for the reason that the Viskan’s sediment is amongst the most polluted watercourses in Sweden. The placing of the object at Teaterbron gives form, moreover, to the scar that the demolition of Borås Theatre back in 1983 came to represent for many Borås residents.

Loan: Lars Gustaf Andersson.

®

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Catafalque

Sean HenryBorn 1965 in England Active in London, England

Sean Henry’s catafalque is one of the most genuine masterworks in Borås. The sculpture has become an emblematic work for the artist who himself acts as model; lying on his back with drawn-up knees, hands resting on his chest and his gaze directed at eternity. What the figure is thinking about we can never know. The answer is there in the spectator’s head and thus we are inevitably drawn into Sean Henry’s magical world.

- catafalque concerns our place in the cosmos. I attempt to understand what we are doing and why we exist. These are thoughts that are within me all the time.

Would you like to know more about Catafalque? Tel: +46 771-27 27 00 and enter code 1273.

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Fauna

Tilda Lovell Born 1972 in Mölndal, SwedenActive in Stockholm, Sweden

Tilda Lovells bronze sculpture Fauna is a one-metre high, two-legged creature resembling a dog. It has skin of bark and a mop tail as well as a cloth on its head that looks like its ears. Beneath the cloth the dog stares out with large, blank glazed eyes. The creation is inspired by a detail in Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych, the painting The Garden of Earthly Delights dating from 1490. There it lives - as one of many animals - in a paradisia-cal landscape with Adam and Eva.

Lovell has made the dog as a cripple. With various natural and clea-ning materials it looks like a kind of religious underdog. At the same time, it has its own strength that derives from nature. On the move but nevertheless still and silent, like a tree, it stands there like some creature one glimpses out of the corner of one’s eye. A visitor from another time, another world or as a materialised being with unknown intention. In the encounter between the work and its surrounding milieu there arises the site-specific art.

Purchased: Borås Stad 2010

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Slits

Pål SvenssonBorn 1950 in Göteborg, SwedenActive in Göteborg, Sweden

- My starting point is always the location - I visit it at all times of day and night, study the historical and physical conditions and, on the basis of these circumstances, ideas are born.

Pål Svensson’s expressive idiom and materials vary wholly in accordance with the character of the site. The hard Bohus granite and its kindred diabase (dark grey to black igneous rock) have, nevertheless, always been a challenge for him. At Stadsparken in Borås there is an interplay of the new sculpture Slits (2008) in black, polished diabase with Nils Möllerberg’s sculpture Galathea (1935). By creating space for air and light inside the stone, lightness and transparency is created that it did not possess before.

- From one side you can feel the space of the hole/cavern while on the polished surface the stone appears transparent like glass, says Pål Svensson.

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Streckkod Borås 2010

Pål Svensson

- The drab wall that the car park and the Åhléns department store turn to the Viskan River can become really striking! For decorative purposes the architect has created recesses of varying width – a barcode (s. Streckkod) long before such ever existed. With reflective glass in each recess it is possible to see straight through the building and imagine the park one is standing in as if it lay beyond the facade. In the reflective glass the greenery gleams in bright green hues but looking down at the water the reflective glass mirrors the blue of the sky. It is strange that one can see two different images in the same mirror, a mystery like Yin-Yang,” says Pål Svensson on his creative idea.

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Den nöjde boråsaren

Olle BrandqvistBorn in Borås 1938, SwedenLives and works in Kinnarumma, Sweden

Olle Brandqvist works in granite, diabase and other hard rock types which he cuts, grinds and polishes so that ”personalities” emerge. The work on the Den nöjde boråsaren (The Happy Man of Borås) has taken just over a year. The stone is a diabase from the Kristian-stad district. During the sculpting work the diabase is light grey, when it is then ground it becomes darker, polished and finished it is black and shiny. The 90 cm high sculpture reflects its surroundings in its own way.

- From this one block of stone to carve a head and create a personality has been an absorbing and captivating task.

”Vad är då en människa”

Olle BrandqvistWork in progress outside The Tourist Agency, Österlånggatan, Borås

- For long I have had long had the idea of wanting to create a large sculpture. Now the time was right to realise this dream. I am now at an interesting stage of my work. With hammer and chisels I shape the eyes, nose, an ear here and a mouth there etc. It takes a very long time but it does give me time to think about what I am engaged in. It’s about forms being counterposed, surfaces and volumes and so on. Sculpture is very much about form. What is it that shapes a person, muses Olle Brandqvist.

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Cloned Frogs on Gala-dress

William SweetloveBorn 1949 in Oostende in BelgiumMainly works in Belgium

William Sweetlove is one of Belgium’s most well-qualified artists. He could easily find a niche within European pop art, but he has a distincti-ve approach to his creativity. Whereas in pop art the choice is frequently made to work with everyday objects and commercialism, Sweetlove has chosen to focus on his favourite subjects: animals and nature. His frogs and dogs in the sculpture group are perfect reproductions and therewith become an argument in the continuous topical debate about cloning. William Sweetlove gets us to reflect on challenges in a changing world - where a common strategy for survival is essential for both people and nature.

cloned Frogs on a Gala Dress is located in the Museum of Textile, Druveforsvägen 8, and can be viewed for free during opening hours (tuesday-sunday 11am-5pm). For the rest of the Museum, standard price of admission applies.

Purchased: Borås Stad (2010).

Would you like to know more about Cloned Frogs on Gala-dress? Tel: +46 771-27 27 00 and enter code 1304.

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© Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm

Catal Hüyük

Frank StellaBorn 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts, USA Studio in New York, USA

Frank Stella made a breakthrough as a 23-year-old when his now world-famous Black Paintings were shown at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), in New York. Stella is the only artist who has been honoured with three retrospective exhibitions at MOMA. During his entire artistic career, Frank Stella has worked with concepts such as light, space and volume. During the last two decades he has focused on sculpture and architecture. His ideas within these areas have attracted wide interest; most recently at the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York 2007. The artist himself has said that buildings are nothing else than enlarged sculptures.

Loan: Wetterling Gallery AB, Stockholm

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Production: Borås Konstmuseum

Texts: Hasse Persson, Kristina Mellström, Ingela Bohm,

Petra Johansson, Sandra Högfeldt, Medeia Sogor Ekner

Graphic design: Marie-Louise Weise

Cover photo: Wholly, Eva Hild. Detail

Photography: Jan Berg

boras.se/konstmuseum

2011

CITY OF SCULPTURES