Olle Kaks
Paintings 1970-2002
May 30 – August 25, 2002
MALMO KONSTHALL
Box 17127
SE-200 10 Malmo, Sweden
tel +46 40 34 12 94
www.konsthall.malmo.se
Opening Wednesday, May 29, 6-9 p.m.
Press Preview: May 29th, 11am
Olle Kaks, Namnobjekt, 1977, mixed media, 180 x 700 cm
Members of the press are cordially invited to a preview on Wednesday, May 29 at 11 a.m.
Olle Granath, the former director of the Statens Konstmuseer in Sweden (The National Museums of Art), will introduce the exhibition together with the artist Olle Kaks.
Full Press Text about the exhibition is attached below. If you need further information or slides before the pressmeeting or if you would like to book an interview, please don’t hesitate to contact me. You can also download press photos as well as additional text from www.konsthall.malmo.se
Opening Wednesday, May 29, 6-9 p.m.
Open daily 11-17, Wednesdays 11-21.
(Closed June 21-21)
Admission free.
Welcome!
Kind regards
Lena Leeb-Lundberg
MALMO KONSTHALL
T +46 40 34 12 94
M +46 708 34 12 94
F +46 40 30 15 07
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OLLE KAKS
Paintings 1970-2002
This summer Malmo Konsthall will host a major retrospective exhibition of one of the most significant figures in contemporary Swedish pictorial art. Until this year, 17 years had passed since Olle Kaks paintings were shown in a major exhibition in Sweden. This January, in cooperation with Malmo Konsthall, the artist opened his exhibition at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. The long delay was due to the fact that he has been a professor since 1979 and from 1987 to 1999 he was rector of the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm, a task which demanded his full attention.
The exhibition in Stockholm has been a great success with both the critics and general public, with overwhelmingly positive reviews and large attendance figures. Olle Kaks allowed the former head of Swedens National Art Galleries, Olle Granath, to make a selection from the last three decades of the artists work. In doing so, Olle Granath used all the knowledge he has gained from an almost life-long friendship with the artist. Malmo Konsthall administered and prepared the exhibition, which it will host this summer, when additional very large paintings will be included.
Olle Kaks has said that he paints because he has to. Not just for pleasure, but also from an inner compulsion. His pleasure in painting, the beauty and delight of the colours, and the voluptuous and erotic elements seduce and engage the viewer like those of the master, Matisse, of whom Kaks is an adherent. Everything bears witness to a great love of painting. Kaks belief in the painted picture as a form of expression has also enabled him, underneath the sensual surface of his paintings, to sometimes depict dangers to the acute observer, to portray horror and disgust and existential angst. His openness to impressions and his ability to transform these impressions into pictures, his eagerness to experiment and his abundant imagination, his free relationship to art historys styles, of which a baroque pictorial approach can be glimpsed in his most splendid paintings, his fervently bold and exhilarated use of colour: all these elements correspond to his own character. This personality, along with his delight in decoration, may stem from his roots in Swedens Dalecarlia region. In addition to Matisse, it is the richly decorated floral motifs of Dalecarlian folk artists and their playfulness with the forms and proportions of decorative elements that are grafted onto Olle Kaks.
