Moment - Ynglingagatan 1: Moderna Museet Stockholm 25 november 2011, 22 januari 2012. Exercisplan 4, 111 49, Stockholm SE. by craniv boyd.

Moment - Ynglingagatan 1:  Anders Edström, Ann-Sofie Back,Anna Kindgren, Bella Rune, Bill Wurtz, Bjarne Melgaard, Bo Melin, Carina Gunnars, Carsten Höller, Cary S. Leibowitz, Charlotte Enström, Chris Burden, Christine Ödlund, D. Gonzalez-Foerster, Edward Ruscha, Elin Wikström, Erla S. Haraldsdóttir, Glenn Sorensen, Gunilla Klingberg, Hardy Strid, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Ingrid Eriksson, Jane & Louise Wilson, Jeffrey Vallance, Jeremy Deller, Jessica Diamond, Jim Isermann, Joachim Koester, Johan Zetterquist, Johanna Billing, Karen Kilimnik, Karin Johnson, Karl Holmqvist, Katarina Andersson, Larry Clark,Lauren Szold, Lily van der Stokker, M/M / atelier graphique, Maria Lindberg, Markus Degerman, Matts Leiderstam, Ola Åstrand, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Peter Geschwind, Peter Land, Peter Saul, Peter Wahlbeck, Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe, Raymond Pettibon, Richard Hawkins, Sister Corita, Sture Johanneson, Swetlana Heger & Plamen Dejanov
Takashi Murakami, Tom Friedman, Tom Marioni, Ulla Wiggen, Vincent Fecteau  Moderna Museet Stockholm: 25 november 2011, 22 januari 2012. Exercisplan 4, 111 49, Stockholm SE. by craniv boyd.

On plan tvo, a lower lever of the prestigious Moderna Museet, Sweden's Museum of Modern art on Skeppholmen island, is an exhibition, currently on view, of contemporary Swedish art of the mid to late 1990-s vintage. Moment - Ynglingagatan 1, is a retrospective project of a both artist initiated, and led, space that was on, Ynglingagatan 1, one street of many in the capital of Scandinavia. 

The exhibition features small scaled multiple editions work, from known and celebrated American artist Ed Ruscha, the German artist, Carsten Höller, is another notable participant, with an installed enclave, truly morbid, with dismembered children's toys, scattered on a flood painted a rich, or deep flamingo pink. 

The general exhibition design rubric, is one that parallels, an art fair scenario. Most visually present, are enclaves which resemble, individual Gallery booths, at art fairs: characteristic for their, mid scaled modular partitions: where current art, recently made, is placed in the white -half or three quarter- cube.  Beyond the cubicle compartments are the larger, actual walls, of the plan tvo room. The real museum walls as they are in, Moment - Ynglingagatan 1 ,  these walls, are adorned with, larger wall paintings, like one made with black paint, of a diagram showing the steps of "money having sex". 

The vast majority of the works are cerebral. Much of these thought heavy art has serious overtones of irony. A large and reflective plastic shining set of letters, announces: www.BMW.com. It is an artwork,  by, Swetlana Heger & Plamen Dejanov , could be read as an ready made in the Duchampian cannon or a clearly a veiled critique of automotive consumerism. One possible knee-jerk reaction could be, "BMW motors sponsored this exhibition, you can't be serious." It is an art work that makes a hard effort not to look like art.

The culture of global consumption, and its representations, are issues, addressed by the installation of Swedish artist Bo Melin. his, Blue lagoon, is a small illuminated blue  pool, looking closely, one reads brand name Banana companies like Dole or Chiquita on the brown cardboard boxes beneath the glowing pool. The boxes are used as bricks, or found materials, to build the idyllic blue pool. The water is held in place by a translucent plastic sheeting, the sheeting half obscures the quizzical building blocks for this ring-shaped pool. As such, a weakness, of the works of Melin or Swetlana Heger & Plamen Dejanov is that that require of the viewer: familiarity with either Marcel Duchamp, or the Pope of Pop artists Andy Warhol, to make themselves, more fully understood as art. The art works are in short, made by artists who profited from an art-school education, and therefor made artwork, in contrast to high modernism.  

A further proponent of art in dire need of consideration, and speculative contemplation, for its appreciation is the wall painting and installation of   Gunilla Klingberg, where the Seven Eleven logo and identity is warped into a whirlwind and painted true to colors on two walls of a corner. For those that know Stockholm or Copenhagen Seven Eleven, is a familiar sight, regardless if you are in Gamlastan or Norrebro. Klingberg compounds the wall painting with an equally strange and mysterious mirrored orb, resting on the floor. The preceiver of her art, can observe themselves, as a skewed being, caught together within the mysterious artwork. A strange neighbor to altered Convenience store emblem, housed in the reflective surface of the weird ball. The mystery and the sources of commonplace fast-food-franchise with the act of seeing, is brilliant, in post pop art method,   Gunilla Klingberg, illustrates that viewer-ship are part of a swirling consumer culture. 

In the red paint on white wall, painting: the future is so bright that you have to wear shades, by Swedish artist, Charlotte Enström, contour drawings of women from fashion advertisements, are layered atop of one another. It is a wall painting that is difficult to read immediately because, of the transparent, outlined, see-through women, that blur, blending into each other. The women are all scaled at approximately two times larger than life scale, making for a big totem of fashionable ladies. Or, the multitude of three quarter women become a wall, a veritable legion of stylishness.

Beautiful Landscape by the Icelandic artist  Erla S. Haraldsdóttir, is a series of four photographs, mounted on aluminum on the same museum wall, as Charlotte Enström's painting. A stunning waterfall, with black lava stones, is co populated by a toad, and a set of cigarette stubs. the highlands of central Iceland are the Launch site for a Space craft. Bald Eagles, not native to Iceland, fly in kitschy harmony with falling glacial water. The placement of all of these odd-ball characters: like a child skipping, with angel wings, for instance, are all done seamlessly. Nevertheless, these placements, of foreign bodies, in the bucolic environs of the arctic are willfully grating. Mrs. Haraldsdóttir's images, frustrate the conventional sense of what makes landscape, or rather  representations of landscapes, by artists, beautiful. The tongue in cheek arrangement of, non sequiturs of pollution, space exploration, spiritual children, or foreign amphibians makes for an artistic statement that is unreadable, and beyond the analytical irony that is the driving force of so much of the art work in Moment - Ynglingagatan 1, at Moderna Museet. 

Moment - Ynglingagatan 1 is a must see exhibition because it explores and makes apparent, what happens when artists, invite their, obscure, yet talented contemporaries living abroad, in London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, or Tokyo to present, their work, in the late 1990's of Stockholm. The capital which was, at that time more exclusively supportive of local heroes. The unknown talent, exhibiting in the  small artist run, and artist funded space, later becomes Super stars at the renowned Gagosian Gallery, like the case of Takashi Murakami, who is also participating in the exhibition. This only as further proof that artists, and their proclivities, are one step ahead, and true leaders of which ever art world, one desires to name.  by craniv boyd.