• photography Daniel Camerini

    Linea Matei’s First Solo Show Is a Tender Triumph

    Written by Rosel Jackson Stern by Filippa Finn

    When I walk into Linea Matei’s first soloshow Ser Du Mig, I don’t know what I’m looking at. Humanoid polyester sculptures with rounded edges in varying champagne colours sit in a circle with an empty chair among them. Each sculpture is stuffed with wadding and set up as though I’ve just walked in on an otherworldly AA meeting — alien yet somehow familiar.

    It’s opening night on a chilly February evening at the Stockholm based gallery CFHill. The room is buzzing with onlookers gazing at the circle, in turn watched by more textile sculptures lining the walls around us. The sculptures seem to echo the humanity of the onlookers. There’s an affinity to them as if we’re meeting ourselves from a different dimension. On closer inspection, each sculpture possesses a mirror where the face should be.

    This confronting intimacy is no accident. Having graduated from Konstack in 2022, this encounter is the first solo show of textile artist Linea Matei. She has sketched each sculpture and crafted them using the sewing skills she gained as a child. The subtle depth of their postures has been hard-won through hours of interviews across Sweden with subjects of varying ages, sensibilities and locations. “I wanted to set up the sculptes so that they explored what might happen if the interviewees somehow met,” she tells me in the upstairs rooms of the gallery. “What would happen if these people from wildly different backgrounds shared space?” she asks. The result is not just a cheap imitation of human behaviour, but a life given, reflected and cared for. Each of the sculptures is someone we know, forgotten or avert our eyes from. They are someone we console, someone whose shoulder we cry on. Both disturbing and comforting, there is a warmth to Linea's show born of mature and nuanced practice.

    At the opening, the eerie familiarity seems echoed by my fellow spectators. When I asked one buyer what made them purchase one of them, he smiled and said: “It was something about the [sculptures] confidence and attitude of ‘please take care of me’ that spoke to me. It’s both vulnerable and strong. Like life.“ What has started as an unforgivingly chilly night in Stockholm has blossomed into an unusual display of public tenderness. We meet the sculptures with the sensibility of glimpsing a long-lost friend, only to be confronted by our own faces. For cold and cynical hearts, the show is bright and unassuming mediation on connection. It is confounding, delightful and surprises even the most deadened of viewers into a shared moment of humanity. It’s a benevolence so sweet that it poked my eye upon first seeing the show, equivalent to a stranger picking up on an awkward habit I never thought anyone noticed. Once I’d finished flinching, something inside me melted at the lives lived through these sculptures.

    Linea has done what the best art does: transmutes the world around them to reflect something of value back at the viewer. To do so without becoming a cliché, or overly “sugary” as my grandmother would say, you have to be specific. In this case, the angle of an arm, or weight of a knee becomes the difference between being force fed a message and inhaling the sweet scent of your favourite dish as a child. There’s no clearly discernible moral to Ser Du Mig, a credit to the artist. True to its name, it constitutes a wildly successful exploration of what it means to be seen.


    Ser Du Mig runs until 15/03/2024 at CFHill Gallery in Stockholm.

  • photography Émilie Mathé Nicolas

    Xavier Veilhan’s new exhibition “Crop Top” in Stockholm

    Written by Fashion Tales

    We are pleased to present Crop Top, a new exhibition by Xavier Veilhan. The opening takes place on February 22nd in Stockholm, Sweden from 17:00 to 20:00 at Linnégatan 31.


    Xavier Veilhan’s multifaceted work encompasses sculpture, installation, painting, photography, as well as hybrids of the aforementioned and he is also engaged in performance work and filmmaking. Veilhan addresses issues of perception as well as the physical and temporal relationships created within the context of the exhibition format, often creating dedicated scenography. His work has been internationally exhibited at acclaimed institutions and he frequently works in the public space. At the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, he transformed the French Pavilion into the critically recognized Studio Venezia.

    In Crop Top, the organic and the digital converge, as do images and volumes. Starting from his series of “blurred” 3D scanned portraits, Veilhan wanted to abstract these works further as well as use materials that correspond with his newfound environmental focus. The material used in this exhibition is essentially raw wood: a renewable material that has been transformed. Most of the wood comes from the region of Sologne, where it is milled directly. Crop Top is also Veilhan’s first opportunity to experiment with a way of conceiving exhibitions that can travel by sea and the majority of the presented works have been brought to Stockholm by sailboat. This environmental and artistic project will develop through exhibitions and collaborations over several years and journeys, including transatlantic ones. The sea freight and the exhibition itself are two parts of a project which fuse as the reality of renting a sailboat, living on it and transporting artworks, meets the reality of the finished exhibition.

    An initial inspiration for Crop Top was the lines and stripes of Tuscan churches composed in marble marquetry. The stripes and contrasting materials appear in the exhibition, most notably in the sculpture Stephen (Crop Top), 2023, from which the exhibition lends its title. Crop Top was chosen for its sound, its evocation of clothing and an arbitrary or artificial cut-off, as is the case of the previously mentioned sculpture whose top has been cut off and replaced by another piece of wood. Lines, stripes and mechanical traces are also left in the materials by the tools used in the production process.

    The exhibition explores different degrees of representation between the physical presence of the object and the virtual existence of the image with an idea of deconstruction - whether sculptural or statuary. This tension in the transition between image and object is present in Veilhan’s marqueteries and in the new abstracted landscape works. A gradual shift from individual objects to a greater whole is taking place as individually coloured wooden pieces are assembled together, and when completed, gives shape to a new motif.

    Xavier Veilhan was born in 1963 in France, and lives and works in Paris, France.

  • photography Sandra Myhrberg
    fashion Filippa Finn

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    Joshua wears

    suit & shirt HUGO
    shoes Talent's own

    Ludvig wears

    suit HUGO
    shoes Artist’s own

    An Interview with Joshua Idehen & Ludvig Parment

    Written by Emelie Bodén & Filippa Finn by Filippa Finn

    In this interview with Joshua Idehen and Ludvig Parment discuss their collaboration, born from Ludvig's admiration for Joshua's live performance with Benin City. Ludvig envisioned Joshua as a solo artist, leading to a unique collaboration with a focus on Joshua as the primary brand.
    They touch on the balance of creative input, emphasising evolving trust for fruitful collaboration. The interview explores the evolution of their sound, with Joshua gaining confidence and prioritising honesty. Ludvig notes the shift from overwriting to leaving room for lyrical finesse.
    Distinctive production techniques, like the use of a choir in the chorus, are discussed as signatures of their work. Looking ahead, Joshua envisions exploring lounge music with poetry and dreams of an orchestral album, while Ludvig expresses a desire for unconventional ventures, including jazz exploration. The interview offers insight into their dynamic partnership, hinting at exciting possibilities in future projects.

    How did your collaboration come about, and what drew each of you to work together?
    LUDVIG:
    I think what drew me to it was seeing when I saw you live for the first time in Benin City. I've respected you since hearing your music, but when I saw you I thought why isn't Josh doing a solo thing, he really needs to find a producer that can get the essence out, and I didn't even think of myself at the time. That's sort of why I've been like what we're doing absolutely shouldn't be a band; we shouldn't have a band name, this has to be your brand and you need to be the one like the main focus.
    JOSHUA: We've known each other since 2016 and tried to work with each on several occasions. You sent me music but I was too involved with my own projects. At one point you produced a few of Benin City's songs in 2018 but that was as far as it got for a while, we were both kind of like in different relationships for want of a better word uh we never really found anything that kind of was us at our best. And then when I moved to Stockholm, both of us were free of everything else we're doing and in a space to do  something new. This was in 2021: you know, i still have the first email when you had sent the first demo of Don't You Give Up On Me, and you were like “er yeah i don't have any ideas and i just worked on this for an hour so tell me what you think”and then i sent you something back just going “yeah i just wrote this the today in my kitchen about so a couple of caveats i think we should get a choir” anyway, the rest is history:

    How would you describe the balance of creative input between the artist and the producer in your collaborative process?
    LUDVIG:
    I think we both have a lot of space to do our own thing. I've never really worked this for this long with the same collaborator before, so I tend to view the way Josh writes to everything i do as a version of feedback, like okay, that enforces my decision on where I take the music and future music next.
    JOSHUA: Our process has definitely evolved since when we first started. On the first mixtape you made the beats and then you sent it to me and then I essentially wrote to that, and I would have sometimes I'd have some feedback in terms of “here's what I want to happen with this verse” but now there's a lot more trust in the process. For example, we have this demo, where you sent the beat over and I wrote to it, and I had thought the chorus was somewhere completely different from where you thought the chorus went but you went along with my arrangement, and then you tore out some of my lyrics to give the track more space and the song is better for it. Just the two of us allowing the other a bit of space in the play pit and bouncing off the ideas and happy accidents.

    How has your sound evolved since you began working together, and what factors contributed to those changes?
    JOSHUA:
    I'm definitely more confident. I'm playing more with the rhythm in bars and also not resting too much on rhyming. Allowing for more space: there are a few tracks on the mixtape that, if I did them now, I would most definitely rip out whole sections and just allow the music to breathe. Also not trying too hard to be clever when I can just be honest, lol.
    LUDVIG: I tended to overwrite stuff before because I just made a beat and I didn't know who was going to be on it so I always had to make sure everything's in there. But now that I know how you work, how you write, I can leave much more room for you.

    Can you discuss any favourite production techniques that have become signatures of your collaborative work?
    JOSHUA:
    choir in the chorus for sure! i think that's a definite signature like, no one else is kind of doing those.
    LUDVIG: combination of three things: dance music, spoken word and a choir, the last one we're using it less and less now right but it is something that I think does definitely mark us distinctly from everybody else yeah. we're not using that many sort of like tricks like we just we're writing songs
    JOSHUA: Maybe that's our problem, maybe we need some tricks

    Are there specific musical or creative territories you want to explore together in upcoming projects?
    JOSHUA:
    oh well i think uh i would like us to do a lounge album like KHRUANGBIN but with poetry, definitely an album with an orchestra.
    LUDVIG: It would be really nice to do something else like super left field yeah like where we can really just be unhinged, and jazz.

    Joshua wears

    suit HUGO
    shirt HUGO
    shoes Artist’s own

    Ludvig wears

    suit HUGO
    shirt ETON
    shoes Artist’s own

    Joshua wears

    pink suit HUGO

    shirt HUGO
    shoes Artist’s own

    Joshua wears

    black suit HUGO

    shirt HUGO
    shoes Artist’s own

    Ludvig wears

    shirt ETON
    trousers ROSE & BORN
    shoes Artist’s own

    Joshua wears
    shirt ETON

    Ludvig wears
    shirt ETON

    photography Sandra Myhrberg
    fashion Filippa Finn
    hair & makeup Vanessa Eriksson Tonelli
    photography assistant Rebecka Barlach

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