This afternoon I got some simple advice on how I might capitalise (not sure I am completely with my choice of word) on being in Liljevalchs Vårsalong. I should identify some commercial galleries that I am interested in working with and in a few sentences present myself and ask if they are interested in working/collaborating with me.
There are a few galleries in Stockholm that I like … that I pay attention to and visit when I am in town. There are also some that I pay less attention to but that for some reason appeal to me. I need to do some more research into those to see what kind of artists they are already working with, and see if I can work out how they work with their artists.
I should also identify and approach some non-commercial galleries – council and ’foundation’ funded ones rather than artist-run.
Writing this I think that it might be a good idea to return to the show this week and take some better … more useable … photographs.
I am still thinking through my reaction(s) to a critic’s lazy and disrespectful comment aimed at me and several other exhibitors * – that we have merely copied other artists/artworks. His comments are actually disrespectful to the selectors too – suggesting that they didn’t see the implied plagiarism (that is to say that the selectors are not as well informed as he is), and by extension weren’t up to the job. The thing that niggles at me is that this is not the only case of such poor … ignorant …criticism that has been made about particular pieces in the exhibition. I am thinking of a specific instance, made by a different critic, which at best could be called misjudged and at worst blatant racism.
Before I posted my response to the critic’s words on my Facebook and Instagram accounts I wrote to him directly at the online magazine that he directs and publishes and where his review appears. I concluded my letter by inviting him to get in touch. So far he has not … and to be honest I do not expect him to do that. Doing so would be too large admission of culpability.
I shall, when appropriate, continue to refer to this in conversations and discussions regarding how one’s work can be so inaccurately assessed by someone who certainly should know better.
The incident has also made me realise that I should never underestimate someone’s … anyone’s … ability to miss what is actually right in front of them. I am pretty sure that I have mis-read other artists’ work, or not given it the time that it required to make more than a cursory judgement. The difference is that I am not then putting in this print. I think that it was while studying and then working with David Barrett and Lucy Head that I learned something very important – if you don’t have time to make an informed comment then don’t make a comment at all. Neither David nor Lucy ever said this outright … they didn’t need to because they simply embodied it and for that learning I am very grateful.
*the article is Swedish so here’s a translation of the closing paragraph:
A peculiarity of the Spring Exhibition 2024 is the number of participants who more or less shamelessly choose to get close to other artists’ works/expressions. Postmodernism’s credo of art as a source of art is celebrating a belated triumph, where the artists – with their current soul mate in parentheses – Stuart Mayes (Charlotte Walentin), Linus Bronge (Helene Schjerfbeck), Anders Ekblom (Ola Billgren), Æsa Saga Ardal (Meret Oppenheim), Anna Clarén (Tuija Lindström), Frank Bruzelius (Tom of Finland) and Susanne Bonja (Kristina Jansson) casually flirt with both older and newer art history. Perhaps this is what the multifaceted Art Sweden 2024 really looks like: an aesthetic smorgasbord where originality and uniformity are not mutually exclusive.
