• Truth is Dead - Alison Jackson

    Written by Fashion Tales

    22 February – 19 May Fotografiska Stockholm

    Royals, politicians and celebrities – no one is safe from Alison Jackson's humorous photographic antics in the exhibition Truth is Dead at Fotografiska Stockholm.

    She makes work about celebrities doing scandalous things in private, using lookalikes.

    The carefully orchestrated scenarios often confirm our worst prejudices … and fears …

    This is an Artist who leaves nothing to chance. Rather, she works like a researcher – or a investigative detective. Always with a passion to find the perfect angle, the perfect casting and the perfect mask; the exact positioning of the specific props,  which are featured prominently to tell the full story.

    Stories, now opening at Fotografiska Stockholm in the exhibition Truth is Dead, that with biting humour cut through the din of the media and bring the astonished viewer to a standstill: What? Is there photographic evidence of Trump having sex with Miss Mexico? How did Jackson happen to be in the right place at the right time to capture the moment when Queen Elizabeth took a homely selfie with the family; a seemingly tipsy Angela Merkel wearing only a fur coat, fell into the arms of François Hollande, or Barack Obama sneaked outside for a smoke …

    “The truth is dead. Nothing that we're shown can be trusted, everything can be faked and nothing is authentic. What does this knowledge do to us? What does it do to our outlook and how we perceive each other? I want to highlight these issues. And to do that I use humour and the human desire to, in moderation, get a peek behind the public images of the celebrities we assign such great symbolic value,” says Alison Jackson.

    Alison Jackson is a contemporary artist who with her realistic photographs pushes the boundaries of what we experience – what is genuine and what is fantasy?

    Born in Hampshire, she now lives and works in London. She studied Fine Art Sculpture at Chelsea College of Art in London and Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art.

    The Truth is Dead exhibition features, to say the least, evocative photographs in which Jackson uses doubles for stars, celebrities and royals. These doppelgängers simulate private, sometimes intimate and exposed, situations.  With these staged photographs, Jackson explores the impact that the depicted celebrities have on our experiences and raises questions about celebrity culture and the public desire for gossip. One odd fact is that Jackson took the pictures of “Trump and Miss Mexico in the Oval Room” before the election, before Pussygate and the Mexican wall…She saw it al coming…

    Oddly enough, Jackson's experience is that it hardly makes any difference that it's obviously not the actual celebrity but a doppelgänger. Such is the need to occasionally fill the void with the kind of superficial meaningfulness that contact with stardom can offer, even if it's fake. The image is a seductive tool that manipulates us and draws us into believing what we see, even though we know that it isn't really true.  “Surface, surface, surface,” to quote Andy Warhol on our desire and fascination for the superficial.

    The search for the authentic is a powerful driving force for Jackson. This need to pore over the truth stems from a childhood characterised by two completely different realities: The public reality shown outwardly and the private reality conducted behind closed doors. The very same dramaturgy that celebrity gossip magazines live on: a public, idealised persona is built up only to then be torn down by revealing details about their private life. What is it that makes this worldwide hysteria for celebrities so pervasive? What is its actual purpose?

    “Celebrities are modern days saints – they take the role previously filled by religion and act as icons for us to worship. Today, more people read gossip magazines than go to church, and every celebrity or royal has a set attribute: Kim Kardashian is a flag flyer for body modification; Donald Trump is wearing the emperor’s new clothes; Queen Elisabeth is a dignified matriarch and Princess Diana was a glamourous independent woman (or “hysteric” from some perspective). They give us a point of reference in a confused world, but do these diversions really help us to develop our best selves?”

    This fake reality collection has given Alison Jackson great success and Jessica Jarl Exhibitions Producer at Fotografiska International, chuckles at the selected pieces.

    “Naturally, many people get upset and Facebook, which bans nipples but allows a great deal of violence, will make a fuss. But this exhibition fascinates with its successful combination of humour and the question as to how we are to relate to one another when nothing and no one can be trusted.”

    Photo: © Alison Jackson, Artist London - Trump with Miss Mexico. This is not Donald Trump.

    https://www.fotografiska.com/

  • BACK TO PARADISE MASTERPIECES OF EXPRESSIONISM

    Written by Fashion Tales

    20 February - 9 June 2019

    A comprehensive exhibition comprising 134 works, including paintings and prints by, among others, Emil Nolde, Otto Mueller and Max Pechstein.

    The exhibition Back to Paradise assembles major expressionist masterpieces from two collections, the Häuptli Collection at the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Switzerland and the collection of the Osthaus Museum Hagen in Germany. Both include outstanding works from the various stages of expressionist artistic production in Germany in the period from 1905 until 1938.  During the course of 19th-century industrialization, the size of European cities multiplied. Social mobility grew and technical development accelerated the pace of life. Tensions among disparate social classes, but also within them, resulted in various transnational reform movements. A young generation began to rebel against their fathers and pave their way towards freedom. Liberated from academic traditions, art at the dawn of World War I became the radical expression of this particular zeitgeist. The impact of these social upheavels led the artists to a search for new lifestyles. The faster the changes have been, the stronger was the yearning for a new paradise, which the artists often found in harmony with nature and in the study of foreign cultures.

    Impressionism predominantly addressed visual perception and thus was unable to permanently satisfy the seekers and restless minds. Painters like James Ensor, Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch had already captured their subjective world experience on canvas. Although Art Nouveau had created forms without shadows and spaces without perspective, over time, the beautiful line seemed to have decayed as a trivial end in itself, but a new spark and emotionality was imminent. »Colors became charges of dynamite, they were expected to discharge light«, wrote André Derain about the Fauvists’ scandalous appearance at the Paris Salon d’Automne in 1905. With the foundation of the Dresden artist group Brücke (The Bridge) in early summer of 1905, Germany also  set the course for change. Subsequently this new and emotive painting style was aimed at not only provoking the bourgeois taste, but as a means to shake up the established concepts of beauty.

    The circle around the Neuen Künstlervereinigung München (New Artist’s Association of Munich) and the editorial department of the Munich almanac Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) set forth on a quest for a new introspection. Painting far outgrew the representational and new theoretical principles for the reconsideration of »primitive« art were established.

    Joint to the exhibition and on display is a correspondance by Carl Milles concerning the events in Germany and the art exhibited at the exhibition Entartete Kunst, in Munich 1937.

    Artists:

    Cuno Amiet,  Max Beckmann, Walther Bötticher, Conrad Felixmüller, Lyonel Feninger, Erich Heckel, Alexej von Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Liebermann, August Macke, Franz Marc, Ludwig Meidner, Gabriele Münter,  Otto Mueller, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Christian Rohlfs, Karl Schmidt Rottluff.

    Pictures:

    Max Pechstein, Liggande flicka, 1910. ©Pechstein Hamburg/Tökendorf

    Emil Nolde, Blomsterträdgård, Kvinna i vit klänning framifrån. ©Nolde Stiftung Seebüll

    https://www.millesgarden.se/

  • Grez-sur-Loing - Arts and Relationships

    Written by Fashion Tales

    16 februari ­- 18 augusti 2019

    This spring's big exhibition at Waldemarsudde presents the mythical artist colony Grez-sur-Loing based on the latest research. In Grez, in the late 19th century, various relationships and relationships emerged between the artists of different nationalities who lived there and the fascinating works that they created in the village and its beautiful surroundings. More than 100 works by Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon artists such as Karin and Carl Larsson, Julia Beck, Karl Nordström, Peder Severin Krøyer, Frank O'Meara, William Blair Bruce and Carolina Benedicks are shown in the exhibition.

    A large number of artists, writers and musicians from different parts of the world met in Grez at the end of the 19th century. In the village they were inspired by each other both artistically and on a personal level. Socially, Grez served as a platform for artist communities, but also for friendship and love relationships within and across national borders. The latter include, for example, the marriage between William Blair Bruce and Carolina Benedicks as well as between Francis Brooks Chadwick and Emma Löwstädt. Despite the fact that the nation-wide connections have, the Grez colony in older Swedish art history writing, and in the exhibition context at home, has been described above all as a domestic affair. In the latter research which is highlighted in this exhibition, a completely different picture is drawn of how artists from different countries lived and acted in consensus side by side in the village.

    The exhibition Grez-sur-Loing - Art and relations is the first of its kind in Sweden to describe the French village of Grez as an international meeting place for Swedish, other Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon artists. The focus of the presentation is the many interesting works of art that were created in Grez from the late 1870s to the early 1890s. The exhibition contains over 100 works in different materials and techniques with motifs from the place and its beautiful surroundings. The bridge over the river Loing, the village's stone houses and gardens, the locals at work and friend portraits. The presentation also shows drawings from festivities such as masquerade and costume bales at Hôtel Chevillon and Pension Laurent. Among the artists who are represented can eg. include Karin Bergöö (married Larsson), Carl Larsson, Julia Beck, Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick, Hugo Birger, Karl Nordström, Carolina Benedicks-Bruce, Christian Krohg, Peder Severin Krøyer, Frank O'Meara, Katherine Mac Causland, Francis Brooks Chadwick and William Blair Bruce.

    Grez-sur-Loing - Art and relations are part of Waldemarsudde's multi-year venture to highlight artist colonies as a phenomenon in the 19th century European art life. Earlier presentations at the museum have included the artist colony in Skagen in northern Jutland, the artist colony at Tyresö outside Stockholm and the Worpswede colony outside Bremen.

    “It is a great pleasure for us at Waldemarsudde to, after the autumn's critically acclaimed exhibition on the Worpswede colony, now shed light on the fascinating international artist colony in the northern French village of Grez-sur-Loing. The extensive exhibition contains works from the late 1800s by both famous and currently forgotten artists of different nationalities. The female painters' situation in Grez, the social connections between the artists and the locals, and the colonial writers, including Strindberg and Robert Louis Stevenson, are highlighted in our rich, research-based presentation. The exhibition is unique of its kind and the first ever in Sweden to highlight the Grez colony as a meeting place for Swedish, other Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon artists, writers and musicians in particular, ”says Karin Sidén, museum director and one of those responsible for the exhibition.

    The exhibition is supplemented by an extensive catalog of articles by writers from England, Ireland, the USA, Norway and Sweden.

    https://www.waldemarsudde.se/

  • The Swedish singer/songwriter Robyn drops a collection together with the Swedish sports wear brand Björn Borg under the name "RBN"

    Written by Fashion Tales

    February 15th. 
    Today, Swedish sports fashion brand Björn Borg releases their exclusive capsule collection RBN with international pop star and fashion icon Robyn. The modern unisex collection presents a mixture of edgy sportswear and street fashion.
    Björn Borg and Robyn put their heads together to create RBN. The capsule collection is developed by Robyn together with renowned stylist Naomi Itkes and Björn Borg’s design team. The limited collection consists of 23 pieces of clothing in different colourways photographed by Casper Sejersen.

    It is modern and non-gender specific; a mix of sportswear, streetwear and fashionable workwear. Inspired by some of Robyn’s favourite garments and some of the pieces in Björn Borg’s archive dating back to the 80’s, it offers full looks with fleece hoodies, tracksuits, polo shirts, underwear and socks.

    “RBN reflects my love for street style and how it’s signaled in youth culture, it is inspired by my favourite garments throughout the years. I thought it would be cool to make gear that I can wear both to go out running and clubbing in”, says Robyn.

    Mija Nideborn Design Director at Björn Borg, about the collection: “The RBN collection really captures what Björn Borg is all about – a contemporary fusion of sportswear and fashion. It is Robyn’s creative vision mixed with our brand DNA, a flirt with the street fashion of today.”

    As part of the RBN launch, Robyn releases her new music video – featuring her song “Send to Robin Immediately”. The global launch is happening at Browns East in London on February 15th and is followed by an after party where Robyn and special guests will DJ.

  • Altered

    Written by Fashion Tales

    The Swedish innovation that reduces water consumption by 98%. With a nozzle that is easily installed on the crane, the amount of water consumed can be greatly reduced. It saves a lot of energy and significantly reduces CO2 emissions. Behind the innovation that is recognized worldwide, there are three Swedes.

    Altered: Nozzle was launched in 2016 via the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. The product was based on an idea to use the pressure in the water pipe to atomize the water to use it more efficiently. Prototypes showed that it was possible to divide the water into millions of drops and to increase the speed to 50 km / h, which resulted in the hands being able to wash with full effect with only 2% of consumption. The response was huge with over 30,000 pre-orders of 30 days and over 50 million impressions on Facebook. In a short time you received inquiries from private individuals, companies, municipalities, hotels and restaurants from all over the world.

    Altered: Nozzle was launched in 2016 via the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. The product was based on an idea to use the pressure in the water pipe to atomize the water to use it more efficiently. Prototypes showed that it was possible to divide the water into millions of drops and to increase the speed to 50 km / h, which resulted in the hands being able to wash with full effect with only 2% of consumption. The response was huge with over 30,000 pre-orders of 30 days and over 50 million impressions on Facebook. In a short time you received inquiries from private individuals, companies, municipalities, hotels and restaurants from all over the world.

    “If we want to make as big a difference as possible, as soon as possible, the goal must be to find extremely simple and affordable ways to upgrade all existing products. Not to replace them. That is what we do with Altered: Nozzle, ”says Johan Nihlén, CEO of Altered.

    Today, the first products have been released and much attention has been paid to the USA and the Middle East, but the fastest growing market is currently India, where interest has been enormous. The products work all over the world and the goal is to reach as many people as possible with the innovation, which has the potential to save billions of liters of water and countless amounts of energy and CO2 emissions.

    Altered: Nozzle has recently been selected to become part of the Nationalmuseum's collection. Cilla Robach, associate professor and first curator of the Nationalmuseum with responsibility for contemporary design, says about the donation of Nozzle Dual Flow Pro: “Design for sustainable development one of the great challenges of the world today and Altered's nozzle offers a simple way for the user to radically reduce their drinking water consumption. But a prerequisite for us to want to use it is that it has an attractive design that blends into modern kitchens. The product has a work height both in design and function. Nationalmuseum is Sweden's responsibility museum for collecting arts and crafts. The collection extends from the 16th century to the present.”

    Since the launch, WWF's prize, Climate Solver 2018, Nordic Cleantech Open and the SME Innovation Award 2018, has also been won by the European Commission's research and development organization for water.

    The company has also recently launched a soap, Altered: Soap, the first in a series of cleaning products specially adapted for the water-saving technology. The product is a rich and environmentally friendly foam soap but only natural ingredients. Altered has more news planned ahead and will, among other things, offer its nozzles in simpler and more affordable materials to get larger, global distribution.

    https://www.alteredcompany.com/

  • New Balance launches unisex collection and continues to pay tribute to talented individuals

    Written by Fashion Tales

    New Balance introduces a new unisex collection that has taken inspiration from the 90's archives. Associated with the launch, New Balance strengthens the brand position “Fearlessly Independent,” which aims to support and lift colorful individuals to inspire others to challenge norms, dare to stand up for change and continue to be progressive.

    The classic New Balance model 997 was released for the first time in 1991 and is, although it may not always got the most time in the spotlight, a big favorite among sneakers connoisseurs. Now New Balance launches it updated version 997H, which inspired inspiration from the classic predecessor, but at the same time breathe modernity and contemporary. The collection also includes clothes, everything in unisex sizes.

    In connection with the launch of 997H, the New Balance continues its work on the global platform “Fearlessly Independent” and this time chooses to let young, fearless Swedish creators take the place and show the outside world its capacity. The campaign faces outwards are the artists Felix Sandman, the former FO & Omedlemen who is now on their own, and Luana Kiara who at Spotify has over ten million streams on his collab “Bad Boy” together with Tungevaag & Rabaan. As the first step in the creative the movement lets you release a music video to Felix Sandman's song “Miss you like crazy” where you to collaborated with set designer and neon artist Josefin Eklund, winner of the Nöjesguiden's Göteborg Award in category “Art of the year” 2018. The music video is released on 8/2.

    It feels like such a large brand chooses to highlight young creators by lifting ours stories and our art. I like that New Balance chose to work creatively and it's cool that they can tell their independent story through mine. I love sneakers so this cooperation fell very much naturally, says Felix Sandman.

    Felix Sandman has, despite his young age and in a short time, achieved great success and has a strong driving force and willingness to change. He belongs to the Swedish independent company TEN Music Group and is highly topical one of the leading roles in Sweden's first Netflix Original series, “Largest of all” released in spring, but will be premiered during the Berlin Film Festival in February. New Balance is both a training and lifestyle brand and they believe that both athletes and creative practitioners are a force for social change and wants to support and lift these in different ways through the platform.

    There are many talented individuals in Sweden who drive conversations, culture and development forward different ways. Through our launch of 997H, we are expanding our cooperation with young and fearless profiles, not only in sports, but now also in creativity and music. This is a first step in spring brand transfer and we have great ambitions ahead, says Hanna Löfberg, Marketing Manager at New Balance.

    The original 997H sneaker is now being modernized and updated in the new 997H to meet today's sport-driven fashion who draws inspiration from the trends and looks of the 90s. 997H comes in four different color settings, is Equipped with an updated sole and a tasteful upper in suede with stylish leather and mesh details. Along with the shoe, two tracksuits are also released in unisex sizes. The 997H collection is released by selectors dealer on 2/2. The prices are SEK 899 for the sneakier, SEK 699 for the track deposit and SEK 749 for wind jacket. Additional product or campaign information can be found on the campaign page at Sneakers Point.

    https://www.newbalance.se/

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