Nature is in focus at the Thiel Gallery during fall and winter! The landscape paintings that Ernest Thiel added to the collection in the Gallery, by for example Bruno Liljefors and Gustaf Fj\u00e6stad, are shown together with photographs and moving images of Thiel himself in the forest or countryside. Three contemporary artists, Corinne Ericson, AKAY and Ernst Billgren, have contributed works in the exhibition rooms and out in the park, to demonstrate that the double standards from the previous turn of the century still exist, albeit in a different way.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the years around 1900, national romantic art, with its moods and atmospheres, existed alongside industrialism\u2019s utilitarian approach to the countryside.\u00a0Sustainability and climate issues are perceived to be increasingly urgent in our own time, but this duality lingers, since nature still serves as a place for contemplation, inspiration and rest, but also as a resource to utilise and exploit.<\/p>\n
The art collector and venture capitalist Ernest Thiel operated in the intersection between these two world views.\u00a0On the one hand, shooting was a favourite pastime, and he prospered from his dealings with the mines in the north. On the other, he filled his home with suggestive and scenic paintings from different parts of Sweden.<\/p>\n
The Thielska Gallery has a large collection of paintings by Bruno Liljefors, one of Ernest Thiel\u2019s closest friends. \u201cHis paintings revealed to me the uniqueness of the Swedish countryside,\u201d Thiel writes, showing that the way he saw forests, lakes and mountains was informed by art. A unique amateur footage from 1930 shows Thiel on Fj\u00e4rdl\u00e5ng, his private island in the Stockholm archipelago, in connection with a game shoot. The film shows the social mechanisms of the shoot, especially among men.<\/p>\n
Corinne Ericson has photographed the hundreds of elk hides she has encountered in the forests of J\u00e4mtland between 2002 and 2013. The photos invite the viewer to discover the hunter\u2019s position and to scrutinise it from the outside.<\/p>\n
Particular attention is accorded to a ramble for industrialists and members of parliament, from Narvik via Kiruna to G\u00e4llivare organised by Thiel and his friends, including the banker Knut Wallenberg, in the summer of 1896, to muster more investment. Wallenberg took photographs that are exclusively on display in the exhibition. Rarely shown paintings by the artist brothers Elis \u00c5slund and Helmer Osslund have been brought up form the museum archives. Thiel\u2019s strong impressions from the rugged countryside and his own financial interests in the landscape probably influenced his choice of these particular works.<\/p>\n
National romanticism established a strong tradition of nature painting in Sweden; this has become part of Sweden\u2019s popular imagery. Since the 1980s, Ernst Billgren\u2019s oeuvre has demonstrated that this is a genre that is especially useful when challenging notions of \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d art. He also reverses the perspective: throughout the ages, people have used nature for their own purposes, but what would happen if animals stepped into the highbrow parlours?<\/p>\n
AKAY\u2019s artistic starting point is the public space. In the past year, he has exchanged the city for the wilderness, painting existing northern Swedish shooting towers in bright colours. The tower AKAY has erected in the Thielska Gallery park, which can be seen through the window, is a reminder that Djurg\u00e5rden used to be royal hunting grounds. The installation around Auguste Rodin\u2019s sculpture The Shadow<\/em> causes an unexpected collision between how the hunter and the artist see the surrounding landscape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nature is in focus at the Thiel Gallery during fall and winter! The landscape paintings that Ernest Thiel added to the collection in the Gallery, by for example Bruno Liljefors and Gustaf Fj\u00e6stad, are shown together with photographs and moving images of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12153,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"exhibition-category":[24],"class_list":["post-5151","exhibition","type-exhibition","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","exhibition-category-previous-exhibitions"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n