THE EDSTRAND FOUNDATION SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS FOR 2004
9 December 2004 – 20 February 2005
Malmo Konsthall
S:t Johannesgatan 7, Box 17127
SE-200 10 Malmo, Sweden
www.konsthall.malmo.se
press preview: Wednesday 8 December at 10 am
Christian Andersson ’1:1′, 2004, installation (detail)
THE EDSTRAND FOUNDATION PRESENTS ONE OF SWEDEN’S LARGEST SCHOLARSHIPS FOR ARTISTS
This year’s presentation will take place on Wednesday 8 December at 7 pm in conjunction with the vernissage of the scholarship exhibition. Its value of SEK 890,000 makes the scholarship one of the largest in Sweden.
You are welcome to attend the preview for the press on Wednesday 8 December at 10 am. Accompanied by Lars Nilsson, a member of the board of the Edstrand Foundation and a professor at the Malmo Art Academy we will have a guided tour of the exhibition together with the scholarship winners, who will receive their awards that evening.
To Christian Andersson (born in 1973 in Stockholm, Sweden) for having, in a series of installations and with unswerving precision and an eye for form, incorporated into the artistic debate an illusionism which almost belongs to the world of vaudeville. Time and again, we have been confronted in amazement with impossible but simultaneously highly tangible physical constellations, in the presence of a fantasy which is far beyond the banality of trickery. (SEK 200,000)
To Miriam Backstrom (born in 1967 in Stockholm, Sweden) for having challenged, in her photographic art and now also in film, the most widely accepted ideas about authenticity, construction and tempo. Using the classic studio camera and “found” scenographic settings from film and television recordings she has developed a highly austere methodology in which reality, fiction and the observer’s position as an interpreter cannot be distinguished from each other. This critical approach to the various media’s construction of reality is also apparent in the intricate interaction between object and subject in the video Rebecka. (SEK 200,000)
To Jonas Dahlberg (born in 1970 in Uddevalla, Sweden) for a methodology in which architecture and film have merged into a wholly individual and extremely suggestive dramaturgy. Here, space is not merely a framework but is rather the actual content of the imagination, whether, like a character out of Kafka, we are transported endlessly around an apartment, or transported in a lift to Hell, or, as in Weightless Space 1, we watch in paralysis as our only potted plant hovers weightlessly around us. (SEK 200,000)
To Tommi Gronlund (born in 1967 in Abo, Finland) and Petteri Nisunen (born in 1962 in Vandas, Finland) for having combined sound and image in an exceptional manner. Their audiovisual sculptures and installations have been nothing less than trailblazing. Whether an individual work comes across as verging on being conceptually austere, or as threateningly bombastic, or as tender but simultaneously ambiguously humorous or poetic, it challenges in its very composition the often so limited laws of representation. (SEK 200,000)
In addition, three scholarships will be presented to students graduating from the Malmo Art Academy: Henrik Dahlstrom, Johanna Domke, and Tomas E. Scherer (SEK 30,000 each).
The foundation, whose full name is “Reinhold Edstrands och hans syskon Gunhild och Theklas stiftelse” has its seat in Malmo. Since 1951 the foundation has awarded scholarships to visual artists. Earlier awards were worth modest sums but after the sale in 1983-84 of the foundation’s art works, shares and real estate holdings, it has been possible to increase the value of the scholarships. The awards have always focused on encouraging younger artists. The foundation selects the scholarship holders. It is not possible to apply for the awards.
For further information and pressphotos see our website: www.konsthall.malmo.se
Please join us!
Lena Leeb-Lundberg
T +46 (0)40-34 12 94 M +46 (0)708-34 12 94 F +46 (0)40-30 15 07.
lena.leeb@malmo.se
