Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art is ceasing its public exhibition activities after nearly 40 years in Stockholm’s free port. The decision is due to the major challenges imposed by the landlord’s renovation work on the property. As of the end of January this year, the museum has been forced to remain closed and evacuate the premises due to a water leak. The renovation of the building is estimated to be completed not before 2027.

Against this background, the proprietary family, represented by Robert Weil and Sandra Weil, together with chairman David Neuman, have made the decision to close Magasin III, which corresponds to some of the employees will need to leave the organization. The work of managing and even expanding the collection will continue. The national and international lending activities will be intensified.

Magasin III has conducted groundbreaking exhibition activities since 1987/1988, where many Swedish and international artists have been introduced to the public for the first time in Sweden. Over the years, the institution has enabled the creation of a large number of new works, under the title Magasin III productions. The exhibition activities have also included a long series of publications as well as significant program activities. Magasin III is entering a phase where, based on our history and collection, we will analyze and develop our distinctive focus. The future work will require continued innovation and take place in dialogue with the public sector to explore all possible alternatives.

Robert Weil   Sandra Weil   David Neuman
Stockholm, May 20, 2024.

Paweł Althamer
Emissaries of Light
January 19 – March 17
Curator: Olga Krzeszowiec Malmsten

Magasin III presents Paweł Althamer’s sculpture group Emissaries of Light for the first time in Europe. Five life size characters are caught in a winding ring dance that appears to defy gravity, as if about to take the next step in the dance or lose balance and fall. The artist leaves it unsaid whether the collective movement of Hermes, Lady from Mariensztat, Kyoto, Grandma, and Wiktor is a joyous experience or a hastening procession towards death. Emissaries of Light, 2022, was recently added to the Magasin III Collection, and is on view in the spring of 2024.  

Paweł Althamer works with sculpture, performance, video, and actions. He often returns to the idea of play as a method of work. Through play, we can follow the rules of the game (society), but also renegotiate or break them. Dancing with others can be a way of playing together and relying on other bodies, but it also carries the risk of losing control. If one is willing to lose oneself in the collective movement, dancing can potentially become an out-of-body experience. Althamer’s work often portrays the human body, but he is primarily interested in what lies beyond our physical manifestation.

Many of Althamer’s projects are rooted in social engagement and collaborations with local colleagues, neighbors, and individuals who lack a strong voice in society. He has worked with homeless, migrants, and youths from socially vulnerable areas of Warsaw. This approach is an extension of his concept of the self-portrait – identifying with the other.

Booklet
A booklet has been produced for the presentation, which will be distributed free of charge to visitors. It will also be available for download from the website starting from January 19th.

For press information, please contact: 
Lisa Boström, Head of Communications Magasin III
bostrom@magasin3.com, 070-772 87 22

The work The Path of Luck (1989) by James Lee Byars (1932–1997) is part of the Magasin III Collection and was first on view at the museum in 1992. The work consists of six geometric sculptures of blue granite presented in individual cabinets, and alludes to the idea of “perfection”.

For press information and images contact Lisa Boström on bostrom@magasin3.com or +46 (0)70 772 87 22.

November 26, 2022 – June 17, 2023

Curator: Karmit Galili

In the exhibition Solar Mountains & Broken Hearts by the artist Maya Attoun (1974–2022) the viewer encounters an imagined world where areas as disparate as mysticism and history, science, and popular culture are placed side by side. In 2021 the exhibition was showed at Magasin III Jaffa, Magasin III:s exhibition satellite in Tel/Aviv Jaffa, Israel.

Maya Attoun saw her artistic practice as a part of the gothic tradition which does not distinguish the beautiful from the terrifying. She was interested in man’s intermittent catastrophes and sculpted from the products of man, that which surpasses him in magnificence. Attoun was a multidisciplinary artist, working in sculpture and installation as well as sound and video, with the same assurance with which she drew.

The exhibition takes the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 as its point of departure. It was the most powerful volcanic eruption on record in hundreds of years and caused worldwide climatic anomalies: the sky was overcast by a volcanic dust that blocked sunlight, black rainfall descended, and temperatures plummeted, to a degree that the year following the eruption became known as the “Year Without a Summer.”

During that non-summer, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his lover Mary Goodwin (subsequently known as Mary Shelley, after the two had married), and John Polidori, gathered in a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. While there, they entertained themselves by writing horror stories. Mary Shelley penned the story that would become the basis for Frankenstein (1818), considered the first ever novel in the genre of science fiction.

Out of this climatic-cultural moment which places on the same level the natural and supernatural, humanity and monstrosity, the earthly and sublime, Maya Attoun built a cosmic landscape that runs on a time scale of its own. The catastrophic landscape Attoun created echoes the volcanic eruption of 1815, but relates just as much to a future tense, here on earth or on another planet. A catastrophe whose circumstances remain unclear; it is a landscape that carves out a circular time dimension within the space, projecting the shadows of the past onto the future.

Solar Mountains & Broken Hearts consists of three bodies of work, all executed in graphite. The solar mountains – Solar Plexus – resembles solar panels and reflects the meticulous and incessant work of the artist. CRY – CybeRnetic Year, an animated work produced through the systematic erasure of a drawing of a basketball; resembling a celestial body the projection fills up and empties out in regular intervals of 24 minutes and 24 seconds. In the exhibition’s eponymous series of drawings, we encounter Attoun’s rich lexicon of images consisting of alchemical symbols, tarot motifs and playing cards, digits, and characters – an iconography that blends together literature, music, pop culture, science, and technology.

Maya Attoun passed away unexpected in July 2022, and though we feel this loss keenly, we find some comfort in knowing her works may now be presented here just as was her plan, exposed to a new audience that has yet to encounter them.

Karmit Galili, Director & Curator Magasin III Jaffa

For press information and images contact Lisa Boström on bostrom@magasin3.com or +46 (0)70 772 87 22.

Lawrence Weiner (1942–2021, New York, USA) was one of the central figures of the conceptual art scene of the 1960s, during which artists renounced art objects and traditional creative techniques. Representatives of this new movement questioned the nature of art, the materials from which art can be created and the forms of display.

In the late 1960s, Lawrence Weiner, whose work had previously included painting, sculpture and performative acts, shifted his focus onto linguistic sculptures. Language took on a palpable role, as did the material and context in which the works were displayed. Transitioning from sculpture in the traditional sense to a type in which language partly constitutes the material, Weiner aimed to discover the contexts through which his work could reach a wider audience. This was the logic behind him presenting his works in a series of varied contexts in no particular order of hierarchy. His sculptures found a common ground both in the public space and on industrially produced postcards and manufactured objects with a wide (and cheap) distribution.

In his work, Lawrence Weiner exploited the multifaceted dimensions and connotations of language. Nevertheless, he claimed that he fundamentally worked in sculpture, rather than poetry or literature. Weiner held that through parsing and interpreting what we see, we can individually shape sculptural concepts. By poetically and playfully deranging linguistic expressions, he sought to unchain the fixed meanings of words and, by extension, to foster an awareness of our own attitudes towards the world around us.

Nearness to the sea is often depicted in Weiner’s work. The nautical references and symbols he employed suggest navigation and unbroken movement. The current one-man exhibition takes as its starting point works that variously elucidate the concept of being adrift, and jointly how we navigate the world through language and context. All the works are from the Magasin III collection.

As a reference to Weiner’s artistry, we will also present the work successes, failures and in-betweens (2012) by artist Meriç Algün (born 1983 in Istanbul, lives and works in Stockholm) in our entrance area. This is one of a series of references that we will introduce during the exhibition period of Focus: Lawrence Weiner.

For press information and images contact Lisa Boström on bostrom@magasin3.com or +46 (0)70 772 87 22.

September 23–October 15, 2022

Foreign Body Ingested will be on view from September 23 at Magasin III and is conceived as an artistic comment on the practice of Chris Burden. A new production by American conceptual artist Jill Magid for Magasin III, Foreign Body Ingested (Portrait of My Son) will be unveiled and on view at the center of the museum’s current collection display of works by Chris Burden, together with one of Magid’s earlier works.

Artist, writer, and filmmaker, Jill Magid interrogates structures of power on an intimate level, exploring the emotional, philosophical, and legal tensions that exist between institutions and individual agency. In each of her in-depth projects, Magid embeds herself within systems of authority, such as government bureaucracies, a secret service agency, or the guardians of other artists’ estates. Her work is realized in a variety of media, including sculpture, 2D works, text and film.

Magasin III has invited Jill Magid to artistically comment on its exhibition of artist Chris Burden, currently on view at the museum with a presentation of pages from Burden’s self-published Deluxe Photo Book 1971–73, where the artist documented twenty-three of his own performances from that period. Magid’s work reacts to Burden’s by probing into the concept of freedom in a similar way, testing the limits of what lies within legal and ethical bounds while integrating the artist’s own body into artistic practices. At the same time Magid identifies a problematic heroic posturing in Burden’s concept of daring, and in contrast, positions her own artistic provocations from a place of vulnerability and questioning, allowing for criticality towards the privilege she occupies.

Magid approaches the installation of Burden’s work as its own system of power, recognizing that this system is as much about Burden’s work as it is the institution’s exhibition of it, and the artworld’s continued canonization of his early performance practice. Defining her own subject position in relation to this system, she conceived a new production for Magasin III, Foreign Body Ingested (Portrait of My Son) (2022) and chooses to present it alongside her work Auto Portrait Pending (2005).

Foreign Body Ingested (Portrait of My Son) takes its point of departure from a coin pertaining to the artist’s work Tender, which was ingested by her young son. The penny is fixed in a custom platinum setting and attached to a silver chain the length of his digestive tract. Originally, the Tender penny formed part of a public artwork, commissioned during the COVID-19 pandemic where Magid interceded in the U.S. economy with a dispersed monument that consisted of 120,000 newly-minted 2020 pennies, edge-engraved with the phrase, “THE BODY WAS ALREADY SO FRAGILE”, and entered into circulation. The number of Tender pennies corresponds to the value of the $1200 stimulus checks that were issued to individuals by the U.S. Treasury.

In Auto Portrait Pending, Magid signed a contract with a company to become a diamond when she dies. The contract specifies the agreement for her transformation and the details of her eventual diamond. Upon her death, the diamond will be created from the carbon of her cremated remains.

While Auto Portrait Pending collapses the artist’s body and her body of work (and its legacy), to circulate in the art market, Foreign Body Ingested (Portrait of My Son) extends this gesture, after the artist’s work first circulated through the body of her own son.

For press information and images contact Lisa Boström on bostrom@magasin3.com or +46 (0)70 772 87 22.

Notes to editors:

Jill Magid (b. 1973) is an American artist, writer, and filmmaker. Solo exhibitions include The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Tate Modern, London; Dia Bridgehampton; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; San Francisco Art Institute; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Berkeley Museum of Art, California; Tate Liverpool; and the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Netherlands. Her first feature-length film The Proposal (2018), commissioned by Field of Vision and distributed in the U.S. by Oscilloscope Laboratories, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and received numerous prestigious festival awards.  Her work is included in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Whitney Museum of American Art, Fundacion Jumex, the Walker Art Center and Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art among others. Magid is the recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2021 VIA Art Fund Grant, 2020 Creative Time Artist Commission, and the 2017 Calder Prize.

Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art has focused on supporting artistic creation and experimentation since its inception in 1987. The Magasin III Collection is a perpetual source of new presentations and reinterpretations. Through site-specific productions and additional acquisitions outside of the exhibition program, Magasin III has created one of the most significant contemporary art collections in Europe. The collection has grown hand-in-hand with the museum’s exhibitions, including more than seventy productions made specifically for Magasin III. By taking care of artworks and actively lending to other institutions large and small the world over, Magasin III helps artists to engage with new audiences and allows the works to be experienced in new contexts. In addition to visiting current exhibitions, nowadays visitors can also learn about the processes involved in preparing future exhibitions, the creation of new works, and the care of the collection. Focusing on encountering the art, the artists, the museum staff, and other specialists, the museum’s aim is to enable a deeper understanding of artistic practice and of how creative ideas and visions take shape.

Ex Libris by Gunnel Wåhlstrand

Magasin III has acquired Lars Norén’s private library of fine art books directly from the playwright’s family. The collection contains 247 volumes including publications on art, architecture, design, and the performing arts.

Norén’s Fine Arts Library will be available in our reference library from Friday, May 6. Here, an inquisitive public and future researchers can experience the intentions and impulses that once inspired Norén’s authorial achievement.

Speaking on behalf of the family, I would like to express our joy in the fact that hundreds of art books that inspired Lars in his artistry are now available through Magasin III. We know that Lars valued the work that Magasin III has undertaken for the sake of the arts. So it is particularly gratifying that the collection is now housed there. We expect that Lars’ art books will both delight and inspire many others.

– Nelly Bonner, spokesperson for the family of Lars Norén

Ex Libris by Gunnel Wåhlstrand

As an homage to Lars Norén, Magasin III has designed an ex libris for his collection of art books. Its design is extracted from a motif by artist Gunnel Wåhlstrand, specially created for this purpose.

Norén and Wåhlstrand crossed paths in 2017, in connection with Wåhlstrand’s solo exhibition at Magasin III that year. Lars Norén wrote an equally thought-provoking and insightful essay for the exhibition catalog. In personal, preparatory conversations with curator David Neuman, Norén expressed his fascination with and fervor for Wåhlstrand’s visual world, and not least the importance of visual art for his own creativity.

Opening this library to the general public means sharing one facet of the material that Lars Norén tapped into in his private life, a wonderful treasure of great cultural value. One is bowled over, while leafing through it, by his interests and preferences. The idea behind this art library reflects Lars’ own wishes not to hide anything, but to grant access to anyone interested in learning more about the visual arts or discovering a novel side of a unique and significant playwright.

– David Neuman, Director Emeritus

In connection with the opening of Lars Norén’s art library, we are exhibiting graphic works of Gunnel Wåhlstrand in our reference library. All these works are from Magasin III’s collection, except for the painting whose motif served as a model of the bookplate, which belongs to the artist.

Lars Norén (1944–2021) is among one of the most played contemporary playwrights in Europe and larger parts of the world. He was also a novelist, poet, and director, having directed both his own and others’ plays. His plays often explore relationships within families. In 2003 he received the Nordic Prize and in 2013 the Bellman Prize, both from the Swedish Academy.

Lars Norén passed away during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, 76 years old.

Gunnel Wåhlstrand was born in 1974 in Uppsala, Sweden. In 2003 she graduated from the Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm, and has since gotten a great recognition for her large ink-wash paintings. She has been honored with a number of grants from prestigious organizations including The Swedish Arts Grant and the Maria Bonnier Dahlins Stiftelse. Magasin III has had two solo exhibitions with Gunnel Wåhlstrand – in 2006, curated by David Neuman, and in 2017, curated by Bronwyn Griffith and David Neuman.

For more information, please contact:
Lisa Boström, Head of Communications
Email: bostrom@magasin3.com
Tel: 0707728722

The general public is welcome to visit the library during our regular opening hours, Fridays and Saturdays between 11 am and 5 pm.

Georg Baselitz, Otto G. Carlsund, Nick Cave, Simon Fujiwara, Susanne Henriques, Wilhelm Kåge, Evert Lundquist, Harald Lyth, Mark Manders, Ohad Meromi, Lars Nilsson, Jonas Nobel, Laure Prouvost, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Luc Tuymans, Rebecca Warren, Rachel Whiteread, Andrea Zittel

Spring 2022
Curator: David Neuman

Elective Affinities (Valfrändskaper) is an exhibition based on the encounters between a variety of artistic expressions mutually attracted to each other. Their visual languages are often related in peculiar ways, and in this presentation, the artistic processes frequently come to similar conclusions, even if each journey there has been a highly individualistic one. The exhibition is curated by our previous director and co-founder David Neuman and presents many new additions to the Magasin III Collection.

In Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities of 1809, the author borrows theories from the well-known Swedish 18th-century chemist, Torbern Bergman, and in modern times Gunnar Ekelöf uses the same concept to highlight the attraction between two entities in proximity. The exhibition gives us the opportunity to experience surprising encounters that curator David Neuman sees as profoundly related: elective affinities. The exhibition presents many new additions to our collection, while at the same time reconnecting with iconic artistic expressions previously exhibited here. The spatial arrangement of the works is based on a sketch by Otto G. Carlsund.

In the room displaying Elective Affinities, Magasin III staged its first exhibition more than 35 years ago. Its walls and floors have exhibited hundreds of artworks since. In fact, traces of such works can be found hidden under layer upon layer of paint on both walls and floor, amongst them some outstanding works in themselves. If only these walls could talk, as the saying portentously goes. So, this time I wanted to set the walls aside.

My point of departure is a sketch by Swedish artist and art curator Otto G. Carlsund. My speculations became the starting point for three fictitious rooms enclosed by a shell, for which the physical walls were now eminently suited. Elective affinities is a concept that I have boiled down to “kinship”, and by my mind constitutes a visual encounter in which creators arrive from different angles, but in which their subjective convergence visibly resounds with comprehension of the expression.

The objects in these three fictitious rooms interrelate in part like the pieces on a chessboard, often even down to their physicality, and are underscored by Otto G. Carlsund’s sketch, reproduced on the gray floor.
– David Neuman

About the Collection
The Magasin III collection is a perpetual source of new presentations and reinterpretations. Through site-specific productions and additional acquisitions outside of our exhibition program, Magasin III has created one of the most significant contemporary art collections in Europe. Since 1987, the Magasin III collection has grown hand-in-hand with our exhibitions program, including more than seventy productions made specifically for Magasin III. By taking care of artworks and actively lending to other institutions large and small the world over, Magasin III helps artists to engage with new audiences and allows the works to be experienced in new contexts.

For more information, please contact:
Lisa Boström, Head of Communications
Email: bostrom@magasin3.com
Tel: 0707728722