Gallery 01:16

TRACES, MEMORY, LANGUAGE

As international contacts increased, more and more Swedish artists began to draw inspiration primarily from the emerging art scenes and movements in the rest of Europe and the USA. Inspiration from the mass-media motifs of Pop Art, the pared-back formal language of Minimalism and the emphasis on painting and colour as carriers of meaning in Abstract Expressionism, opened up new ways of working. However, these influences were rarely adopted directly. Instead, they were reinterpreted and integrated into individual practices, resulting in a diversity of expressions.

This diversity is also reflected here in the gallery, where traces of time, memories and places run like undercurrents through several works of art. The present intersects with history, and personal experiences are interwoven with collective ones. Other works engage with contemporary political events, such as the Vietnam War and its aftermath. At the same time, there was a growing interest in concept-based approaches, and the relationship between text and image became increasingly significant. In both visual art and concrete poetry, the limitations and structures of language are challenged. The works highlight how language carries power and ideology, but also how it can be manipulated and reshaped.