WANÅS 2011

Yoko Ono, Jacob Dahlgren, Charlotte Gyllenhammar, Astrid Trotzig & Fredrik Söderberg and Expeditionen för arkitektur och grafisk form

BECOME A PART OF THE ART AT WANÅS 2011

On May 15, 2011 the exhibitions opened for the season, for the first time under new leadership.

The Wanås Foundation opened grandly with five parallel exhibitions. It is a lively season with new art works in the sculpture park by Yoko Ono and by Jacob Dahlgren. At the same time the permanent collection in the Park is activated by a closer look at Charlotte Gyllenhammar’s oeuvre and the release of a guide exploring the collection.  Entirely new initiative at Wanås is the premier of a children’s book series as well as Expeditionen för arkitektur och grafisk form who explores the tension field between past and present, between castle and barn, in a design intervention in the Wanås café.

New in the Park – Yoko Ono and Jacob Dahlgren
This year Yoko Ono (b. 1933, JP) and Jacob Dahlgren (b. 1970, SE) are invited to use the Wanås Park as their space. The new Co-Directors Elisabeth Millqvist and Mattias Givell, comment on the new season: “The artists’ work enhances the performative and the spectator becomes participant. Wanås 2011 invites you to take part.”

For the opening in May, Yoko Ono presented two works in the Art Gallery and two in the Park. In addition she created a new piece specifically for Wanås which will emerge throughout the year. Yoko Ono is a groundbreaking artist. Her work frequently consists of an invitation to participate through instructions, and by using simple means. For instance, inviting people to hang wishes from apple trees, mend broken porcelain, climb a forest of assembled ladders to look at the sky, place a photograph and write a thought about their mother and place it on canvas – are ways she deals with love, peace and memory. At the Venice Biennale in 2009 Yoko Ono received the prestigious Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Jacob Dahlgren is one of Sweden´s most prominent artists. He works continuously with material from daily life creating abstract works that in different ways engages the viewer. In a new large-scale sculpture in 18 colors he invites the spectator to move in the labyrinth-like sculpture. During the opening ceremony Dahlgren had a black and white striped performance consisting of 130 participants who performed a simple choreography and together became a large mobile painting.

Revisit - Charlotte Gyllenhammar
The Park at Wanås is open all year and exhibits nearly 50 permanent works of contemporary art. Starting in 2011 the collection is activated by featuring an in-depth presentation of an artist who is already represented in the sculpture park. The first Revisit is of Charlotte Gyllenhammar (b. 1963, SE). In 2002 she created the major installation Vertigo – a copy of her studio, upside down and under ground at Wanås. The exhibition contains sculpture and film, as well as early and recent art works.

Premier of a children’s book series – Astrid Trotzig & Fredrik Söderberg
In a book about tears of pearls and whispering winds, Sam and the children at the castle meet a Water Witch by the pond. The story takes place among the trees and art in Wanås Park and with the use of words and images it encompasses the magical and fantastical. The Enchanted Park is the first book in an artistic experiment – a children´s book series about Sam who experiences the art and the park in reality and in the imagination. Every year a new author and artist will create a children’s book experiment. The premier book is written by the author Astrid Trotzig (b. 1970, SE) with illustrations by the artist Fredrik Söderberg (b. 1972, SE).

Design – Expeditionen för arkitektur och grafisk form
Wanås expands to include related Art disciplines. The group that referrers to themselves as an expedition for architecture and graphic form, Matilda Plöjel (b. 1974, SE) graphic designer and Katarina Rundgren (b. 1973, SE), architect and writer, work with projects that explore the intersection between architecture and graphic design. In this tension field – between past and present, castle and barn, visitors will find their design intervention in the Wanås Café. In a free interpretation of table decorations and mealtime traditions, they explore and superimpose the past on today’s endless quest for the good life and the perfect kitchen.