Lars Bohman Gallery is pleased to present Maria Miesenberger's fourth exhibition in the gallery. The exhibition sums and concludes the artist's large photographic project Sverige/Schweden and consists of some 60 new works. Miesenberger is also of current interest with her extensive artist book Sverige/Schweden, with texts by Elfriede Jelinek and Jan-Erik Lundström, designed by Gunnar Kussofsky and Greger Ulf Nilsson and published by Steidl.
Maria Miesenberger started her project Sverige/Schweden in 1992, when she made her first black and white photographs with their blackened and blurred figures. Since then the project has grown, and includes a total of approximately 120 images.
With their roots in the Miesenberger family album, the photographs create a platform from which the viewer is allowed to look ahead, and most importantly, to look back, this his or her own childhood. The artist has taken her father's negatives and made her own copies on which she with ink has blackened the figures. These images have then been photographed and the delicate work in the dark room has followed to find exactly the right sharpness and light.
Out of this slow process Miesenberger´s dreamlike, yet strongly realistic images grow. From her own private photos, the artist creates an imagery that become universal and common and that invites the viewer to a deeply subjective travel where the own memories are mirrored end reflected in Miesenberger's blackened profiles. We recognize the places, the front porch, the backyard with the footballs, the summer memory from the beach, the bedtime story in the parent's arms, etc. For a second we see the hint of a door opening to the artist's own childhood, but only to realize the second later that this door is closed. Misenberger does not tell any stories, she throws the question right back. What is your history? What is your story? What is your experience? The duality in these images opens up an almost infinitive space. Through the entire project runs a sense of humbleness and generosity and, perhaps most importantly, a great curiosity of self as a concept and the identity as a starting point for a definition of the conditions of being human.
In the exhibition there is also the sculpture Half an Angel, which has earlier been cast in aluminium. This new version is in black patinated bronze. As a shadow of the figures in the photographic series, the sculpture has seemingly stepped out form the photo's two dimensionality to present itself in a physical form in the gallery.
The exhibition, together with a generous selection of the artist's sculpture, was during last autumn on display at Bildmuseet Umeå, and later in Kristianstad Konstmuseum. The exhibition has now, in a somewhat modified form, arrived in Stockholm.
Maria Miesenberger was born in Svalöv, Sweden in 1965 and she lives and works in Stockholm. She is represented at among others, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Malmö Konstmuseum, Borås Konstmuseum, Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg, Henry Buhl Collection, USA, Skövde Konstmuseum, Sundsvalls Museum, Vida Museum. She has had numerous solo shows, at among others, Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Lunds Konsthall, Bildmuseet Umeå, Kristianstad Konsthall, Skissernas Museum in Lund, Skövde Konstmuseum, Silverstein Gallery and Robert Mann Gallery, New York.
For further information and press images, please contact the gallery.
Maria Miesenberger started her project Sverige/Schweden in 1992, when she made her first black and white photographs with their blackened and blurred figures. Since then the project has grown, and includes a total of approximately 120 images.
With their roots in the Miesenberger family album, the photographs create a platform from which the viewer is allowed to look ahead, and most importantly, to look back, this his or her own childhood. The artist has taken her father's negatives and made her own copies on which she with ink has blackened the figures. These images have then been photographed and the delicate work in the dark room has followed to find exactly the right sharpness and light.
Out of this slow process Miesenberger´s dreamlike, yet strongly realistic images grow. From her own private photos, the artist creates an imagery that become universal and common and that invites the viewer to a deeply subjective travel where the own memories are mirrored end reflected in Miesenberger's blackened profiles. We recognize the places, the front porch, the backyard with the footballs, the summer memory from the beach, the bedtime story in the parent's arms, etc. For a second we see the hint of a door opening to the artist's own childhood, but only to realize the second later that this door is closed. Misenberger does not tell any stories, she throws the question right back. What is your history? What is your story? What is your experience? The duality in these images opens up an almost infinitive space. Through the entire project runs a sense of humbleness and generosity and, perhaps most importantly, a great curiosity of self as a concept and the identity as a starting point for a definition of the conditions of being human.
In the exhibition there is also the sculpture Half an Angel, which has earlier been cast in aluminium. This new version is in black patinated bronze. As a shadow of the figures in the photographic series, the sculpture has seemingly stepped out form the photo's two dimensionality to present itself in a physical form in the gallery.
The exhibition, together with a generous selection of the artist's sculpture, was during last autumn on display at Bildmuseet Umeå, and later in Kristianstad Konstmuseum. The exhibition has now, in a somewhat modified form, arrived in Stockholm.
Maria Miesenberger was born in Svalöv, Sweden in 1965 and she lives and works in Stockholm. She is represented at among others, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Malmö Konstmuseum, Borås Konstmuseum, Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg, Henry Buhl Collection, USA, Skövde Konstmuseum, Sundsvalls Museum, Vida Museum. She has had numerous solo shows, at among others, Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Lunds Konsthall, Bildmuseet Umeå, Kristianstad Konsthall, Skissernas Museum in Lund, Skövde Konstmuseum, Silverstein Gallery and Robert Mann Gallery, New York.
For further information and press images, please contact the gallery.