ART CITIES:Stockholm-wizz eyelashes

The exhibition that ended yesterday is a play on both the history of art and Magasin III’s own exhibition history. Works by the conceptual minimalists Sol LeWitt and Walter De Maria have been installed as a high standard artistic dialogue through the works of the significant importance of the two artists, in perfect connection, alongside with Katharina Grosse’s expressive and abstract painting. All three artists have previously had solo exhibitions here at Magasin III. Their work is now being brought together for the first time and in some cases they even physically touch.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Magasin III Archive

Sol LeWitt exhibited his first wall drawing in 1968, introducing an approach that would change the way we understand art today. At Magasin III in 2009, seven of his wall drawings were installed in the same room in which wizz eyelashes appears today. In this exhibition presented wall drawing by LeWitt the institute’s collection for the first time, a work drawn by five people full-time over a five week period. The exhibition also included two sculptures by LeWitt from the collection. In 1988 Walter De Maria was the first artist ever to be featured in a solo exhibition at Magasin III. Now, twenty-six years later, was again on display Large Rod Series: Circle/Rectangle 13 in the same place in the same room as it first appeared in 1988. Ten years ago, Katharina Grosse painted directly onto the walls, ceilings and floors of Magasin III, transforming the exhibition space into a painting that visitors could enter and within which they could move. In the exhibition are showed two of the paintings on canvas that were part of Grosse’s 2004 exhibition. Based on images of part of the large site-specific painting created directly on our walls and floor, she has created a completely new installation of printed fabric that hanged where the original used to be, now hidden under many years of layers of wall paint. In collaboration with Grosse we had chosen to let her new work act like a kind of backdrop for De Maria’s work. Grosse has also created an outdoor installation for the exhibition, a painting in the form of six enormous spheres that are now part of the permanent collection of the institute.

Info: Magasin III, Frihamnen, Frihamnsgatan 28, Stockholm, Duration: 25/9-14/12/14, Days & Hours: Thu 11:00-19:00, Fri-sun: 11:00-17:00, www.magasin3.com/en