Mamma Andersson
Texts by Kim Levin, Midori Matsui, Lars Nittve, Lars Norén, and Ann-Sofi Noring
The Swedish painter Karin Mamma Andersson works with dreams, fairy tales, and the details of everyday life. Her passion for storytelling means that every dark maelstrom is scattered with structuring elements: a window, a television, someone looking at a painting. Her early works feature children in vast landscapes, forests, lakes and countryside that echo her own childhood in northern Sweden, (she was born in Luleå in 1962). In later pieces, this rural setting yields to the interiors of the art world–cluttered framers’s workshops, libraries, and elegant salons. Most recently, these rooms have opened up towards new realms, where the finely ornamented objects from Andersson’s gallery scenes seem at home, dreamlike, in the wilderness, with paintings hanging from snowy mountains. Whatever her motifs, the atmosphere is always one of serenity and wonder, a moment of appreciation between finding and forgetting. Today, Andersson is one of Sweden’s most internationally recognized artists, with recent solo exhibitions at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. She represented her country at the Venice Biennale in 2003, and was also featured at the 2004 Berlin Biennial and the Sydney Biennial, 2006.
Publisher: Moderna Museet / Steidl
Artists: Mamma Andersson
Contributors: Kim Levin, Midori Matsui, Lars Nittve, Lars Norén, Ann-Sofi Noring
Publication Date: 2007
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 11 1/4 x 9 in (28.6 x 22.9 cm)
Pages: 228
Reproductions: Illustrated throughout
ISBN: 9783865213990
Retail: $200
Status: Not Available
Mamma Andersson
Born 1962 in Luleå, Sweden, Mamma Andersson studied at the Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm, from 1986 to 1993. Her work has been represented by David Zwirner since 2004. She has had two solo exhibitions at the gallery in New York, including her United States debut in 2006. Her second gallery show in 2010, titled Who is sleeping on my pillow, marked the first time she exhibited alongside her artist-husband Jockum Nordström in concurrent solo exhibitions. She had her first museum solo exhibition in the United States at the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, in 2010, and her first solo exhibition in Ireland at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, in 2009. In 2006, the artist won the Carnegie Art Award, a prestigious prize for Nordic contemporary painting, which received a corresponding exhibition that traveled extensively throughout Europe. In 2007, she was the subject of a critically acclaimed mid-career survey at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, which traveled to the Kunsthalle Helsinki and the Camden Arts Centre, London. Her work was represented in the Nordic Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). Andersson’s works are included in prominent collections internationally, including the Dallas Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
