Elective Affinities
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
