Lena Johansson - Life: Stockholm

Andréhn-Schiptjenko is pleased to present Lena Johansson’s solo exhibition Life. The exhibition, which is Johansson’s fourth with the gallery, opens on Thursday, 21 August, between 17:00 – 20:00.

 

The visual world that Lena Johansson has built up over the years can be likened to a chamber play. In her works, we often find ourselves intimately close to the characters, where gestures, expressions and the relationship between the people in the various works set the atmosphere. Her process has always been driven by intuition and what she calls a subconscious logic - just like in dreams or when she reads the tarot cards she often lays. For over twenty years, Johansson has been collecting lifestyle magazines, delving into them for images that awaken her desires and from these she then creates suites of new stories. There is never a clear narrative that Johansson wants to convey to the viewer, but they often reflect deeply personal experiences from her life.

 

Sincerity is one of the most important aspects for Johansson in the painterly process. By removing the image from its commercial context and bringing it together with her choices, brushstrokes and narratives, the image takes on a different form. In this process, she allows the motif to control the degree of intensity and the layers added to the painting - a process she knows has reached its end point when she feels that her inner resonance matches that of the painting. For her, each painting is a unique state of mind and a place where the experiences and emotions she brings to the work are best articulated through the brush rather than through words.

 

For Lena Johansson, depicting what is considered attractive is also a kind of defiance. Growing up in the Swedish 1970s and 80s was characterised by practicality and functionality, and from this arose an attraction to the opposite - the beautiful, the glamorous, the desire-filled. Depicting these themes is a way for her to elevate them, but also a way to explore their visual language and codes, the identities we construct and their ambivalence. The young woman, whose face is partially hidden behind a veil or mask, is a recurring motif in her work. Johansson is interested in the shield against the world that beauty can also constitute, especially in relation to women. Often portrayed as an object, she is just as much a conscious actor through the choices and the carefully composed surface she chooses to present herself with. The women Johansson portrays can thus be seen as directors in a play they themselves choose to control.

 

Lena Johansson (b. 1975) lives and works in Sweden. She has previously exhibited at institutions such as ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj, Denmark; Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Vestfossen, Norway; Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden; Lunds Konsthall, Sweden; Värmlands museum, Karlstad, Sweden; and Ystads Konstmuseum, Sweden.