Max Ockborn
Drop the house meat
Opening Friday evening, May 29th, 17-20pm
Lund Art Gallery and Gallery Cozmo has an opening that same evening!
May 30 – July 5
Behind the industrial door In Max Ockborn's studio there are the fluorescent tubes, the smell of varnish and the washed-away black stains on the worn vinyl floor, like horror movie blood from a wayward monster. Black. To make sculptures in black. To evoke references to century-old bronze sculptures whose life out in the city space has darkened and oxidized the bronze into a surface that devours the light.
Max Ockborn's sculptures have primarily been created for galleries and exhibition spaces, but in recent years they have also moved into the public environment, both as permanent and temporary works. There they encounter other conditions such as durability, weather, wear and tear and bodies passing close by. The sculpture becomes not just something to be looked at, but something that must be able to remain.
In Ockborn's work there is a shift of materiality. It is as if someone has poured superglue into a movement, or into a step. Like stabilizing something that is already frozen. A reverse animation. The last layer of varnish works almost like the last coat of varnish on a painting, a signal that the work is ready to meet an audience. Like the last adjustment of hair or clothing before entering a meeting room. Or the quick reflection in a shop window to see if one's body and energy are ready to meet the gaze of others. The varnish becomes such a gesture: a final attunement before the sculpture leaves the studio.
There is also something in Ockborn's way of presenting his sculptures that reminds one of the cafeteria line at a Swedish high school. How one stood in line. Who one queued with. The discomfort with one's own body, which was constantly changing. Trying to look effortlessly cool while at the same time one's arms were too long in relation to the body, or one's feet suddenly looked like boats instead of shoes.
But unlike the worry of being cringe, or being seen the wrong way, Ockborn's sculptures have a direct presence. They take their place in the room. Even when expressions of not wanting to be seen are recognizable, like when a sculpture leans on one leg. To remain in one place, frozen because the legs don't quite carry you, and at the same time to be on the move. The second before the balance or movement shifts.
Ahead of the exhibition at Krognoshuset, Ockborn has shown these sculptures at Rättvik Art Gallery together with the artist Inga Hjohlman. Two other sculptures are being shown at the same time at the newly opened Axel Ebbe Art Gallery in Trelleborg. The sculptures move, or are transported, between the rooms. In Rättvik, an intensely tender dialogue arose with Hjohlman's sensitive and at the same time straightforward wooden sculptures. The works could be seen together in a common field of vision, where the voids between the sculptures, the viewers, the walls and the floor created new entrances.
Felicia Troedsson Friberg, curator of the exhibition at Rättviks konsthall, describes how both artists are interested in what happens when a sculpture is no longer primarily a thing, but a social event. When the viewer is invited into a room or a meeting, rather than just looking at an object. The sculptures change the room, which in turn changes us.
The work on the exhibition also highlights Jane Bennett. Bennett is an American philosopher and political theorist, known for her work in new materialism and the book Vibrant Matter. She writes about matter as something more than inanimate objects. Materials can influence, resist, attract, disturb and initiate movements.
It is possible to imagine a conversation between Bennett and Ockborn, perhaps in another time and place. For with Ockborn, the materials are not just carriers of an idea. They act, gather, shine, solidify, protect, hide and attract the eye. They are not silent. They have been somewhere, or pretend to have been. They bear traces of work, space, friction and handling.
This is perhaps where the sculptures become most present. Not just as objects in front of us, but as bodies that have already lived for a while before we enter the room.
Excerpt from the text of the work by Max Ockborn
…in the sculpture that left its previous post, there is an imbalance between us, from the drapery, or behind, in a minimal impact, in a wall, inside flesh, where the dust of the fabric is, in the time that darkens and the day that falls, as if you are hiding in the fabric, in the breach, in the feeling of metal against the tongue, like a sledgehammer against the temple, as if soaked in blood, but not dead, as if the sculpture will not want to reveal the murder because in that case it will be locked up and lose its audience, as if the evidence becomes the death of culture, as if it has been stuck in the sinuses for a long time, as if it has had a blind eye with a severe infection, as if the eye only sees peripherally with milky vision, as if coughed up during a cold, as if several hundred kilos of material have been put together and run, have been trimmed, if you only knew…
Max Ockborn (b. 1983) is based in Malmö. He is educated at the Malmö Academy of Fine Arts, graduated with a master's degree in fine arts in 2012 and a master's degree in critical and educational studies in 2017. Since then, he has established himself as one of the more distinctive voices in contemporary Swedish sculpture. Although Ockborn primarily works in sculpture, his practice also encompasses text, video and sound.
Based on a slow and material-oriented process, he builds works from collected and saved materials, natural objects, wood, acrylic mass, silicone, glue and other found objects. These are gradually joined together to form sculptural bodies that move between figure and object, between human, animal and something more indeterminate.
Max Ockborn has exhibited at, among others, Malmö Art Museum, Galerie Leger in Malmö, Galleri Krets and Cultural Documents in Filignano, Italy, Röda Sten Konsthall, Moderna Museet Malmö, Skissernas Museum, Bonniers Konsthall, Fullersta Gård, Kalmar Art Museum and Moscow Museum of Modern Art.
He has created public works for Göteborg Konst and Stockholm Konst, including at Selma Lagerlöfs torg in Gothenburg and Bredängsparken in Stockholm. He is represented in the collections of Malmö Konstmuseum, Skissernas Museum, the Swedish National Arts Council, Stockholm Konst, Göteborg Konst, Region Skåne, Region Uppsala and the Maria Bonnier Dahlins Foundation. Max Ockborn has been awarded several scholarships, including the Maria Bonnier Dahlins scholarship, the Barbro and Holger Bäckströms scholarship, and work grants from the Swedish Arts Council.
For more information about the artist: www.maxockborn.com
Social media coordinator @maxockborn
Graphic design: Marianne Heed Miskar
Photo: LCB
Thanks to Marianne Heed-Miskar, Lena Bergendahl, Jakob Erlsandsson, Oscar Häggström, Inga Hjohlman, Jin Hwa Borstam, Catarina Östlund, August Ramberg, Behnaz Alebouyeh, Krognoshuset, Felicia Friberg Troedsson, Rättvik Konsthall, Annika Börjesson, Axel Ebbes Konsthall, Amila Puzić, Mia Christersdotter Norman, Röda Sten Konsthall, the Swedish Arts Council, the Swedish Arts Council and the Municipality of Lund.
Availability see website www.krognoshuset.se
For more information about accessibility, you are welcome to contact us.
Opening hours
Opening Friday, May 29th, 17-20pm
Other days Thu-Sun 13-17 pm
Midsummer different opening hours
Wed-Thurs 13-17 pm
Closed Fri-Sun (Midsummer weekend)
Always free entry
Krognoshuset is run with the support of Lund Municipality and the Culture Council