39. XL Sculpture – Konstfack


We experience the renaissance of physical sculpture in our time. Art students are more and more interested in exploring the form and the material. What does a shape, a surface or a material express? There is an increased interest that is not always easy to express in words.

In April, the Konstfack students started working with the artworks that are now exhibited in the Örebro County Museum park. Wearing white overalls and face masks, their presence on the outdoor premises of Konstfack did not pass unnoticed. On the contrary. One would see this alien-looking bunch of young people standing and cutting with long, hot treads in large white blocks. They would communicate with glances, as the face masks prevented them from speaking. Every now and then, someone would come out and shout: Shut the door!, as wisps of the forbidden smoke from the foam would find their way into the school’s corridors.

Many students chose to work with foam, following the sculpture course “Konstfack, Sculpture XL”. In the course, students had the opportunity to work with foam blocks measuring 1 x 1 x 2 m. The participating students come from different departments like Art, Ceramics, Jewelry and Corpus, Interior Architecture and Furniture Design and Graphic Design. The diversity of their artistic expressions and the pleasant time we had working together are reflected in the group exhibition they present at OpenART.

Text: Gunilla Bandolin

Participants: Agustin Ortiz Herrera, Alejandro Montero Bravo, Anna Leena Prykäri, August Sörenson, Carola Björk, David Andrén, Dina Isæus-Berlin, Finn Anton, Giulia Cairone, Jakob Rosenberg, Jonas Holmer, Josefin Sjöström, Linn Dahlgren Hansson, Malena Norlin, Maria Westmar, Nina Noreskär, Petter Dahlström Persson, Sanna Laaban, Sofie Rykowski, Tove Dreiman, Åsa Copparstad.




Agustin Ortiz Herrera

Our economic and social system has been based on the generally accepted concept of private property and wealth accumulation. These along with the idea of achievement drives the economy but with it as well comes a high social pressure. Generally speaking we trust in the exponential growth of the value of space and its speculation, but paradoxically we know that the high volatility of our system is a problem. It already reached a momentum where we politically support to the essential right to decent housing, within an institutional framework based on human rights that all democratic states proclaim, while reality moves farther and over the possibility of universalizing this fundamental right. The project I am presenting at Open Art comes third in a series focused on problematizing the contradictory ideal that is systematically legitimized at our socio-economic system. Thirty square meters of a public park are going to be privatized during the exhibition. One fence surrounding the space is going to be locked and I will be the only one with the key. I am also planning to spend some scheduled time in there interacting with the space and audience like if it were my home, for that I am planning in taking some personal objects and furniture to make the space more livable. The experimental element is introduced in the changing contexts game. I want to delve and investigate the known dynamics by manipulating them and reverting the generally assumed cultural conditions in housing.




Alejandro Montero Bravo - My New Fake Pearls

Foam, Pattex PU foam, spray paint, acrylic, epoxy

I graduate this year with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from Konstfack. In the past years I have been working with issues regarding the social structures within our society and how those structures have created a fear of things that don’t fit in.  In my Bachelors exhibition “I Wish This Was On My Way To Work” I talk about how the absence of color and form in our city landscapes teaches us at an early age that non-conforming things should be next to non-existent. I believe that we’ve been programmed unconsciously on how to unite as a people and respect each other by not breaking any unwritten rules or norms, which among other things, has led to a segregated Sweden. Because if we’re taught to conform and to never stand out, what happens to the people who are involuntarily different?  With this piece, “My New Fake Pearls”, I talk about the issue of how the making of our culture has predominately been defined by a few Swedish types of perspectives on Art, since there are very strong conventions around who is allowed to make art. This leads to future generations only getting a handful of perspectives on Swedish history. I want to create something grand that demands attention in order to shed light on the absence of my perspective, and to attempt to question Swedish taste. By using cheap aesthetics that refer to 80s glamour and dream of fortune, I want to show off what we consider to be tacky and I want to show it with pride.



Anna Leena Prykäri

That moment

Birds sang.
In the morning`s free.


From tears
We grow.


The past
A border zone.




August Sörenson - Informer

A machine is a tool containing of one or more parts that uses energy to perform an intended action. The part or parts move according to mechanical laws: The behavior of physical bodies when subjected to forces.

But before I create the movement I have to imagine the machine and I have to inform the moving parts.

If I look at the objects around me as potential machines I have to ask myself; what does these machines want? And if it is I who inform these machines, what do I want and who informs me?




Carola Björk - Bad habits die hard
that we hours later would have shared among thoughts and talk. Instead. Before and now.The  title  ”Bad  habits  die  hard”  has  a  double  meaning  to  me.  It  means  that  bad  habits  are
dealt  with  questions  about  responsibility  and  choice.  Choose,  which  is  something  we
always  do,  when  even  not  to  choose  is  to  make  a  choice.  I  have  been  thinking  about
directions  a  life  can  take.  On  the  constant  ongoing  and  time  as  vital.I  imagine  that  the  object  in  the  glass  container  can  serve  as  a  symbol  of  people  and
experiences  we  carry  within,  but  might  no  longer  be  with  us.  Which  is  preserved  in  us.
That  it  can  function  as  a  form  of  time.



David Andrén

A weather stick consists of a pine branch stripped of bark and needles, it will adapt to its surrounding climate by reaching upwards as the relative air humidity rises and bend towards the ground as the level of humidity decreases. Traditionally it is put upside down when placed on its favored location, mirroring the current weather by displaying a low posture of hopelessness as it rains and reaching toward the sun with joy as the weather clears.

I seek to use the gentle sway of the weather stick to make a space that carries a climatic sensitivity, a shelter that adapts its transparency and porosity as the weather changes. A space which proposes a utopian wish for an architecture more aligned with the asymmetric conditions of the shifting weather. A quiet resistance against the current hegemony of interiors where the climate is isolated, lukewarm and static. A small step away from the tendency, where we spend our time in monotone interior climates on a planet where the exterior climate is turning more extreme by each day.


Dina Isæus-Berlin - Untitled(Frozen State)

I’ve been asking myself: Can abstract painting be three-dimensional without being concrete?

Untitled (Frozen State) is one of my many answers. I’ve been working with physical space instead of pictorial space, with meetings in material instead of colour. I have been moving in depths instead of sideways. Untitled (Frozen State) is also a piece about a stiffened process. The result of a course of events where all energy and mobility have been paralyzed with expectations. Like a waterfall in mid-winter.



Finn Anton - 1954
“One in five children in Sweden can not swim , and just as many adults have at some time had to save a wet baby out of the water . Only to increase the safety of water , Trygg – Hansa in over 50 years has awarded lifebuoys free. Trygg-Hansa donate lifebuoys , which then owned and managed by the municipalities, yacht clubs and cottage associations simply ordered them to increase the safety of water. Lifebuoys put Trygg-Hansa for the first time in 1954 and since then has given away more than 200 000 lifebuoys . Today there are exactly 80,000 lifebuoys around Sweden at beaches, rivers , boat clubs , lakes , beaches, ponds , docks , bridges, etc. Trygg-Hansa buoys saves the life of an average of 11 real people a year.”
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Giulia Cairone - CA·RESS (K -R S )
A A gentle touch or gesture of fondness, tenderness, or love.
tr.v. ca·ressed, ca·ress·ing, ca·ress·es
1. to touch or stroke in an affectionate or loving manner.
2. to touch or move as if with a caress: soft music that caressed the ears.
3. to treat fondly, kindly, or favorably; cherish. from french caresse, from italian carezza, from latin carus dear”.
/www.thefreedictionary.com/caressI work with materials such as soap, wax, cosmetic products, sugar and plaster. Matter is structured, packaged and transformed into new compositions. Behind the surface processes and movements are revealed. I boil, mix, pour and melt and transform. Surfaces areplaned, wrinkled and broken.


Jakob Rosenberg - Temporary shelter

Sign for tent, a symbol for protection


Jonas Holmer - Flocking Sundial

Some people have said that each hour of the day has its own color.
What would happen if two hundred different species of birds would meet in a park? Naturally, they would collaborate to give each waking hour of the day its own song.


Josefin Sjöström - Repair & Care

My artistic practice is a study of dreams, esotericism, romantic visions, clichés – phenomenons found in the borderline between the real and unreal. My recent projects have revolved around the human search for inner harmony and the quest for meaning, which often manifests itself in capitalism and consumption.


Linn Dahlgren Hansson - Untitled




























In my process is the mentioned in constant dialogue. Not always relevant but disputed or experienced. Confirmed or rejected depending on the result. We, me and I, are rarely in a symbiosis but the conflict is driving us, me. A manic state to understand, and for the moment let beingness take over. It oscillates between a bottomless, as heaven or absolutely nothing. Somewhere there is a decay which not havet to be death.

To question the illusion of value.



Malena Norlin -Untitled (Openings) & Untitled (Puddle)

“I create in anticipation. I draw thin lines on a blank piece of paper. I draw thin lines because there is no motive, there are images but they are blurred, vague, fleeting. There are no words, so I draw thin lines. The words come much later, they are distance with a longing for closeness. It comes down to trying to catch something that you can not get hold of, I’ll settle with pointing.”

Malena Norlin is working with sculpture and text. Her practice elaborates how artistic manifistations can be expressions beyond language. Expressions that is not too be understood but rather to be involved in. Her work deals with time and space, absence, presence and ambivalence. Her working process is floating and organic and the physical works can be seen as lingering moments in a flow of images.




Maria Westmar - "Floating lighter but heavier than the seas"

“Floating lighter but heavier than the seas”



Nina Noreskär

Nina Noreskär often uses materials that are common materials within painting. Paper, brush, colour but it is always clearly connected to the ”act of doing”. The painting is restless annd what is shown is the resultat of her performativ act with the materials. The painting happens in many stages; in the mind, in the doing, on the surface, in the viewing and in the presentation. Nina Noreskär is interested in abstract painting and how one can work with it today.

She often take over whole rooms where she takes use of floor, ceiling, walls and space together with materials such as paper and plastic. But for Open Art Nina has chosen to show a work done in the studio and brought to Örebro. She mixes the restless and the controlled, sometimes even carefull. To work on big fabrics allows here to create an own room/stage.



Petter Dahlström Persson - Public Rails

 Rails are the lines that our bodies follows and support themselves on while moving through the cityscape, they point out directions and borders and our hands touch them and holds on and are led in a never ending stream. They are anonymous objects in our cities whos inconsistent design and origin passes without much reflection. Sometimes they look like sculptures standing by themselves in a sloping staircase, worn and dented, but a part from the sculpture they all have the purpose of something to touch and use them.



Sanna Laaban - Minigolf characterized sculpture group

My work will consist of a number of parts, at least three of them. The forms, made out of chipboard and wood, are geometrical and inspired by minigolf holes. The more horizontal surfaces are covered with felt. They are all unplayable and will have a top layer of epoxy for protection against weather and wind, and for extra finish.

They will be places in connection to each other; preferable on a flat patch of grass, so that the beholder can survey the entire group at once, which is often the case at minigolf courses. The colors will vary for every “hole” but not more than that they will be experienced as a unit.



Sofie Rykowski - Basic blå
Basic blå is stories about moral courage, responsibility, power and cooperation, and a
performance in which the audience become a group that experience together. It is a discussion
about ethics through the body, movement and a range of viewpoints, were understandings are
li’ed out of their context in order to create new perspectives.
In Sofie Rykowskis practice she approach her subjects with the experience she has gained as an
artist, textile practitioner, dancer and lawyer. Rykowski create a collage of knowledge from
di0erent sources, which in her performances are merged into a whole and create new stories.
Participants: Sofie Rykowski and Marit Fogelgren
Duration: 15 min


Tove Dreiman -   The Fountain of Youth

 The Fountain of Youth  Flexible, strong, fit and fresh. Each workout a ritual, streamlining the loose into a lithe muscle.  Styrofoam, resin, PVC, water pump. 85 x 85 x 250 cm.

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Åsa Copparstad -   Slagman

Slagman a sculpture that illustrates the feeling of being useless in society. Slag is what is left when producing metal. I see the way we tend to use up people and make them feel unimportant at a certain age. Is it really a heavy burden to carry the years? or is that just a social construct? Slagman is a representation of ageism a plage that is widespread in todays culture.