Tal R & Mamma Andersson – About Hill
Discover two of the most important contemporary artists in the Nordic region. For this exhibition they have created a series of brand new works, all related to the great Swedish artist, Carl Fredrik Hill.
The Danish-Israeli artist Tal R (b. 1967) and the Swedish artist Karin Mamma Andersson (b. 1962) both helped pave the way for new 21st-century painting. Both of them have arrived at a powerful artistic expression. In their own way, each of them tackles the field of tension between figuration and abstraction, based on a shared view of drawing and painting as a personal, yet universal human need to express oneself with pencil and brush. In particular, they both draw extensive inspiration from the great masters of art history, whom Tal R and Mamma Andersson are now joining.
In the exhibition Tal R & Mamma Andersson – About Hill, the two artists explore Nordic painting by basing their works on the art of the great Swedish artist, Carl Fredrik Hill (1849-1911), whose quivering, quasi living landscapes and mysterious worlds emanate melancholy, symbolism and a psychologically unstable artistic existence – for both good and bad.
The exhibition is a collaboration between Kunsten, Malmö Konstmuseum and Museum MORE, who are proud to be presenting works by two of today’s top Nordic artists, brimming with references and charged with correlations between past and present. For Kunsten, this exhibition is a key player in the celebration of the museum’s 50th anniversary, when the museum is not only looking back, but also looking forward by featuring a number of pre-eminent contemporary artists.
About Tal R & Mamma Andersson
Tal R and Mamma Andersson both draw on a world of motifs that is at once familiar and alien. Sometimes with an explosion of colour, sometimes with simple, dark shades, in their works both artists succeed in creating mystery, yearning and, at times, inner darkness.
Even though the immediate expression of their works could not be more different, the two artists share an enthusiasm for, and fascination with the great masters of the past, and both Tal R and Mamma Andersson deploy direct allusions to art history in their works. Tal R’s works include his own versions of Munch’s The Scream and Danish Artists in Rome (after Constantin Hansen); while in the works of Mamma Andersson, painters such as Peter Doig, Claude Monet, Edward Hopper etc. often feature in her interiors, and her motifs reflects the dark world of Nordic painting.
About Carl Fredrik Hill
Declared insane at the age of 28, Hill was diagnosed with schizophrenia. This made a huge impact on his work as an artist. He progressed from landscapes – initially rooted in Romantic painting and then inspired by the contemporary French painters he discovered during his time in Paris – to a mysterious pictorial world, in which he portrayed his innermost visions. It was during this period that he created his famous ‘illness drawings’, which are not only a key source of inspiration for Tal R and Mamma Andersson for this exhibition, but also play their own major role in About Hill.
A quiet space for the heart
"The individual artworks speak both on their own and as a unified chorus of voices. The exhibitions hits the spot combining mental images and contemporary art. A very inspiring experience to witness”.
– Weekendavisen
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"Two Nordic contemporary artists eminently pick up the thread after a schizophrenic artist"
– Jyllands-Posten
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"The exhibition runs until Easter next year, and that's great because you can easily visit it more than once"
– Nordjyske
Tal R –Blåt håndklæde (2022)
Mamma Andersson, Sömnlös / Sleepless, 2021. Foto: Per-Erik Adamsson
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