Lars Nilsson

Born 1956 in Stockholm. Lives and works in Malmoe and London.

The exhibition is a retrospective with works from 1987-2002 by Lars Nilsson. This is the first full-scale, comprehensive presentation devoted to the work of Lars Nilsson. It comprises nine large installations, two sets of paintings and a new video installation displayed in both of the upper exhibition spaces and in the newly opened space on the lower level.

Lars Nilsson’s career includes painting, sculpture and video, as well as installations. Since 1995, Lars Nilsson is professor of Visual Arts at Malmö Art Academy, Lund University. Lars Nilsson’s work has been exhibited at PS1 Museum, New York, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, among others, and most recently, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena. After Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall the exhibition will travel to the newly opened Site de Création Contemporaine, Palais de Tokyo, Paris.

“I am totally convinced that we all have an imagination. Something going on “upstairs” that has little to do with the reality of everyday life. I am also convinced that the act of recognizing, clarifying, remembering, and finally developing those inner workings, are available, but not attainable by us all. Therefore, those who do, those who dare make their mark allowing themselves into the forefront, are exceptional people, as in this instance, when describing, the artist Lars Nilsson. To know Lars the individual, and to be familiar with his artistic oeuvre, I see an inseparable correlation between the intellectual, the psychological, and the artistry. The totality of his artworks, or productions, embodies the elements of the unification of mind and soul. He reaches into the depths of many a male “fantasy” and draws it out, to a conclusion, to three dimensionality that I too can see, and feel elements of identification and memory within. His willingness to display, or “expose” himself in such a shameless manner, gives certain credence to one’s own not yet established or even recognizable images.” (David Neuman, Director Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall)

“In the past ten years I haven’t done anything that didn’t feel necessary, which may seem like a luxury (..). But as is often the case when it’s a question of making art, it’s not something you choose. You do what you have to do in the only way it can be done. I have chosen to focus on something specific. I don’t know how it could have taken any other form or proceeded at a different pace.” (Lars Nilsson)

“Nobody could accuse Lars Nilsson of political correctness. Why should we? He has a courage, an acuteness and an artistic ruthlessness that are highly unusual. To carry out a project that to this extent exposes and stages the artist’s private self, to dare to resort to and test out to the full the most far-reaching feminist analyses of male violence and sexuality, to look into his own abysses and his own darkness, to dare to acknowledge, even if indirectly, the shortcomings t affect the most vulnerable aspects of the self, and what is more to be able to use it for something that communicates so persuasively and so frighteningly, is admirable and extraordinary, especially as the investigation is carried out with a formal brilliance that brings the private out into the public. Already heralded in his works of the 1980s, Nilsson’s major autobiographical project of the 1990s is unique.” (Gertrud Sandqvist, Principal of Malmö Art Academy)