Fairs & Events
Highlights of Market Art Fair 2023
Market Art Fair – the leading contemporary art fair in the Nordic region – opened its doors to the public on Friday, May 12. The fair invites collectors and art enthusiasts to discover and get inspired by galleries representing the Nordic countries.
“Since our founding by galleries from the Nordic countries, our aim has always been to strengthen the Nordic art scene — said Sara Berner Bengtsson, Director and CEO of the fair. “The way we do it has refined and evolved over the years, and now we are exclusively focusing on Nordic artists (by origin, residency, or artistic theme) but we welcome plenty of non-Nordic galleries, collectors, and industry professionals.”
The Artland team has been on the grounds during the first days of the fair and has highlighted five artists who got their attention.
Emilie Bausager
Booth: Lagune Ouest
Emilie Bausager’s practice deals with the fluidity of history and the impossibility of adequate representation. The narrative in-between reality and fiction is one of the main focuses of her work. Since much of the historical documentation of our landscape’s history refers heavily to communal storytelling, by looking at old stories relating to our surroundings and combining them with contemporary information, Bausager creates summarised collages of specific settings that are relevant to her heritage in Britain and Denmark. Employing anachronism as a reoccurring artifice in her work, she creates a tension between curiosity, insight, gravity, and humor. Often rooted within the landscape, constructed or not, Bausager’s output takes its shape as installations comprised of elements such as stained glass, textiles, objets trouvé, text, and prints.
Emilie Bausager (UK/DK, 1992) holds an MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2019). Recent exhibitions include: Den Frie (Copenhagen), SOL (Nexø), SKAL Contemporary (Skagen), OK Corral (Copenhagen), NADA (New York), Loggia (Munich), Kristen Lorello (New York), and Lagune Ouest (Copenhagen).
Aki Turunen
Booth: Helsinki Contemporary
Aki Turunen’s paintings are based on a combination of intuitive, subconscious imagery and knowledge of art history. Turunen’s interest in history and tradition places the artist in the continuum of materials and imagery choices. By shaping traditional tools to his own need and combining a personal narrative with images drawn from history, Turunen reflects on shared human experience through his paintings. Continuously reinventing himself from one exhibition to another through an ever-evolving practice, Turunen strives for openness and permissiveness, which results in the delicate, clear strokes of his finished paintings.
Aki Turunen (b. 1983) lives and works in Helsinki. He graduated with an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, in 2011. Turunen has also studied painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. His works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Finland, e.g. at the Helsinki Contemporary exhibition Gonzaga Yellow, Galleria Forum Box, and Kluuvi Gallery, and in Denmark, e.g. at Martin Asbæk Gallery. Turunen also participated in the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition in 2011. His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, the Saastamoinen Foundation, and the Finnish State Art Commission, among others. In autumn 2021, the Finnish Art Society awarded Turunen a William Thuring designated prize.
Siiri Jüris
Booth: Galleri Duerr
Siiri Jüris’ latest work revolves around Estonian folklore, incorporating folk tales, games, and beliefs. She merges these traditional elements with personal memories and interpretations in her paintings, using zoomed-in effects and action snippets to create mystical environments of saturated colors. Within these environments, abstract, classical, and digital visual languages unite to form a collage-like landscape of vibrant hues, where human bodies are scarcely discernible amidst biomorphic forms and digital-looking patches. Her practice is also strongly influenced by her upbringing near water, which adds a fluid and dynamic quality to her mystical and vibrant world.
Siiri Jüris (b. 1992) is a Swedish-Estonian painter, currently living and working in Uppsala, Sweden. She holds an MFA from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (2021) and an MFA in painting from the University of Tartu (2017). Jüris has participated in many group exhibitions, mainly in Estonia and Sweden, Slovakia, and Lithuania. She was one of the finalists for the Young Painter Prize in 2019 and 2021; in 2020, she won the “Young Tartu” competition. Jüris’ solo exhibition “matter that (em)bodies” was held at the Tartu Art Museum in February 2021. Her solo exhibition “As the day fades into midnight hues” was held at Galleri Duerr in November 2022.
Sascha Weidner
Booth: Dorothée Nilsson Gallery
Sascha Weidner (1974-2015) was a German photographer and artist, who lived and worked in Belm and Berlin. The work of Sascha Weidner deals with the creation of a radical subjective pictorial world. His photographs are characterized by perceptions, aspirations and illuminate the world of the subconscious.
Weidner studied photography, film, and painting as well as communication design at the Braunschweig University of Art. In 2004 he was Meisterschüler of Dörte Eißfeldt and graduated with distinction. With the support of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), he worked in Los Angeles between 2004 and 2006.
About Weidner’s work, Director of Photography at the Centre Pompidou Florian Ebner wrote: “Describing one’s own life in photographic images – in the way one perceives or dreams it – is a complex thing. Because photos are not texts; they cannot be ‘read’ in a conventional sense and yet they convey messages. When Sascha Weidner takes photographs, he transforms visible reality into codes, into encrypted pictures. Depending on how he arranges them and the contexts into which he places them, new narratives are created.”
His work has been exhibited and published internationally and has earned numerous distinctions. In addition to many publications and collections, his works have been shown in numerous exhibitions worldwide, including at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Foam in Amsterdam, the International Photography Festival Knokke-Heist, the Kunstverein Hannover, the C/O Berlin, the Zephyr / Rneiss-Engelhorn-Museum in Mannheim, the FO.KU.S in Innsbruck, the Monash Gallery of Art in Melbourne, the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, the Museum for Photography in Braunschweig, the DZBank Kunstsammlung in Frankfurt am Main and the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney.
In September 2016, Sascha Weidner’s long-awaited monograph Intermission II was published by Hatje Cantz. Weidner had prepared and brought this artist’s book to completion in its current form during his lifetime.
Alexander Tovborg
Booth: Galleri Nicolai Wallner
Starting from history, mythology, and religion, as well as written and oral narratives, Alexander Tovborg draws on the stories that have come before us in order to explore and re-contextualize classical archetypes. In looking at the ways through which we have built our narratives in the past, he proposes a new reading of our current social and political situation, examining who we are and where we find ourselves today in the here and now.
His laborious and layered technique can be seen as a kind of rhythmic practice that allows Tovborg to submerse himself in various worlds, creating a visual language that runs throughout the work, spanning different series, figures, and motives. The emphasis on the various symbolisms that are found throughout ancient narratives is something that Tovborg sees as essential to his practice, as he asserts the weight and power that images have within our contemporary culture, as well as how easily they can be manipulated and used against us. Tovborg engages in an effort to keep their meanings open, giving us the chance to see in them all that they encompass.
Alexander Tovborg (b.1983, Denmark) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2010. With solos at Overgaden (Copenhagen), GL Strand (Copenhagen), and Rudolph Tegner Museum (Dronningmølle) among others, Tovborg has notably shown at ARKEN (Ishøj), ARoS (Aarhus), IMMA Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), Spiritmuseum (Stockholm), Holstebro Kunstmuseum (Holstebro), and KØS (Køge). His works are represented in the public collections of Kunsthalle Bremen (Bremen), Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), ARKEN (Ishøj), ARoS (Aarhus), and Museet For Religious Kunst (Lemvig). Tovborg will open a solo show at Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen) in June 2023.
While Market Art Fair runs at Liljevalchs Konsthall and the nearby Spritmuseum in Stockholm through May 14th, its digital iteration will continue online, exclusively powered by Artland. Browse the fair here.
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