Johan Wahlström
Johan Wahlstrom from Stockholm, Sweden is an artist who is making a conscious effort to describe the social political landscape of our contemporary world.
He is mostly known for his ironic series Social Life/Disconnecting that gives a perfect sense both from a conceptual as a formal point of view of this estrangement. He is a magnificent observer of our social life’s.
He is a fifth-generation artist on his mother’s side. His first creative direction was rock and roll, where he had a successful and long career as a keyboardist and singer, touring with Ian Hunter, Graham Parker, Mick Ronson and many Scandinavian artists. After 18 years, the rock and roll life caught up with him. Wahlstrom moved to a small village in France where he did nothing but paint for seven years, part of that time under the tutelage of Swedish artist, Lennart Nystrom. Wahlstrom’s narrative paintings of heads and torsos are inspired by cryptic, often ironic social critiques that he collects on scraps of paper in his studio. Wahlstrom lives and works in Jersey City, NJ, USA.
His works have been exhibited since 1998 across Europe and the USA in solo shows and group shows with artists like Andy Warhol, AI Weiwei, Gerhard Richter, Santiago Sierra, Erwin Olaf, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Jake & Dinos Chapman, and David Salle.
Selected Publications:
Paper Magazine, USA
Brooklyn Rail, USA
Art Critical, USA
Artnet, USA
Huffington Post, USA
WhiteHot Magazine, USA
Quite Lunch Magazine, USA
Art Pulse Magazine, USA
Forbes Magazine, USA
Konstvarlden, Sweden
Opulens Magazine, Sweden
TV4 National Television, Sweden
Wall Street International Magazine, UK
Art Fuse, USA
Art Voices, USA
Miami Times, USA
Bedford Bowery, USA
Newsweek, USA
Selected Collections
Peter Rothschild Family Collection, New York, USA
David Brolliet Collection, Geneva, Switzerland
The Modern Museum Of Art, Dubrovnik, Croatia
National Gallery, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovinia
Eileen S Kaminsky Family Foundation, USA
Ethan Cohen Family Collection, New York, USA
Swedish Finn Historical Society, Seattle, WA USA
400 Clairmont Urban Renewal (Real Estate), Jersey City, NJ, USA
Doron Klinghofer, AMBA, London, UK
A Kasteyeu State Museum, Kazakhstan
Mana Contemporary Collection, USA
Fondazione Opera Campanda dei Caduti, Italy
Spazio-Tempo Collection, Italy
Macura Museum, Serbia
Bell of Peace Foundation, Italy
Mattias Jonsson Family Collection, Marbella, Spain
Marie Taittinger Collection, Belgium/France
Thomas Bodstrom Family Collection, Stockholm, Sweden
25 Senate Place (Real Estate), Jersey City, NJ, USA
Liza Marklund Family Collection, Stockholm, Sweden
Mona Sahlin Collection, Stockholm, Sweden
Ivar Jacobsson Family Collection, Verbier, Switzerland
Selected Recent Exhibitions including Art Fairs:
Art Miami, Art Fair, Ethan Cohen Gallery December 2019
No Rules, Solo Exhibition Gallery Ramfjord
Oslo, Norway September-October 2019
Collisions, Solo Exhibition Georges Berges Gallery New York, NY, USA
June 2019
From 1960s Celebrities Until Todays Social Media, From Warhol To Wahlstrom 2 man show, Andy Warhol, Johan Wahlstrom
Ethan Cohen ́s The KuBe
Beacon, NY, USA
May-August, 2019
Orphans Of Paintings II
Ethan Cohen ́s The KuBE
Beacon, NY, USA
Group Exhibition curated by Raul Zamodio and Ethan Cohen
Among the artists in the show, Ai Weiwei, Jeannie Motherwell and Fabian Marcaccio
Hidden Figures, Solo Exhibition
Es Arte Gallery, San Pedro De Alcantara/Marbella, Spain April 2019
JustMad, Art Fair, Madrid, Spain, ES Arte Gallery February 2019
Art Miami, Art Fair, Ethan Cohen Gallery December 2018
Contemporary Istanbul, Art Fair, Istanbul, Turkey, Ethan Cohen Gallery September 2018
Ethan Cohen Gallery, New York, NY, USA
“From 1960s Celebrities Until Todays Social Media, From Warhol To Wahlstrom” Curate by Paco Barragan, 2 man show.
September 2018
Marbella Art Fair, Marbella, Spain, ES Arte Gallery July 2018
Foundation Fernet-Branca Contemporary Art Museum, Saint Louis/Alsace, France “Collection David H. Broillet Geneve” “40 ans de collection et un film documentaire de 60min”
Group Show, Among the artists included are Miguel Barcelo, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Olafur Eliasson, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Salle.
May - September 2018
Es Arte Gallery, San Pedro De Alcantara/Marbella, Spain, “Hidden Figures” Solo Exhibition, May-June 2018
Vertical Gallery, Chicago, Scandinavian Artists curated by Galleri Ramfjord, Group Exhibition, May 2018
Georges Bergés Gallery, “Life Is Good”, Solo Exhibition, New York, NY, USA March-April 2018
Cross Contemporary Art Gallery, “Mark Me” Group Exhibition, Curated by Ford Crull, Saugerties, NY, USA, February 2018
Robert Kananaj Gallery, “Realistic Abstraction”, Group Exhibition, Toronto, Canada, February 2018
Georges Bergés Gallery, Solo Exhibition, “Distorted Happiness” New York, NY, USA, June-July 2017
Petra Lossen Gallery, Group Exhibition, “Political Poetical” curated by Paco Barragan, Zurich, Switzerland. November-December 2017
Artists in the exhibition: Erwin Olaf, Santiago Sierra, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Johan Wahlstrom
BuBox, “Forever” curated by Gery Van Tendeloo and Jerome Jacobs, Kortrijk, Belgium, March-May 2016.
Artists in the exhibition: Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, Jake & Dinos Champman, Gavin Turk.
Castrum Peregrini, “Read My Lips” curated by Paco Barragán, Amsterdam, Holland, Group Exhibition, April-June 2016.
Artists in the exhibition: Shepard Fairey, Nicola Verlato, Ronald Ophuis, Nedko Solakov and Kepa Garraza
Form/Space Atelier (artist run space), Seattle, USA, “House Of Lies” Solo Exhibition, April-July 2016
WhiteBox NYC, “Let The Bidding Begin” (”Pay Per Inch”) Performance by Johan Wahlstrom, May 31st, 2016
WhiteBox NYC, New York, USA, Act Of Sedition, Group Exhibition, Curated by Raul Zamudio and Juan Puntes, October-November 2016
Fridge Art Fair, Miami, USA December 2016
Centre Cultural Can Gruart, Girona, Spain, Group Exhibition, December 2014- January 2015
FONDAZIONE OPERA CAMPANA DEI CADUTI
“Human Rights”, Group Exhibition, Curated by Roberto Ronca, Rovereto, Trento, Italy, June-August 2015
Robert Kananaj Gallery, Toronto, Canada, Group Exhibition, RKG Fourth Anniversary, July 2015
Artist In Residency at Eileen S Kaminsky Family Foundation (ESKFF) - MANA Contemporary
Jersey City, NJ, USA. September-December 2015
Representerad
- The Modern Museum Of Art, Belgrade, Croatia
- National Gallery, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovinia
- Marie Taittinger Collection, Brussels, Belgium
- Peter Rotschild Collection , New York, USA
- Macura Museum, Serbia
- David Broillet Collection, Geneva, Switzerland
Övrigt
On Balance Between Art and Criticism: Johan Wahlstrom's Recent Works
Just as there is an insurmountable gap between aesthetic and ethical ideals between Antiquity and Modern art, from the beginning of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st, the thought of art is overwhelmed by an insurmountable amount of philosophical, sociological, psychological, gender, racial, market, and all other issues, to such an extent that the fundamental artistry should be ashamed if it's not filled with all that content. Psychology, to be as scientific as possible, renounces the psyche (Greek for the soul), and contemporary art seems to strive to be current as a journalist. Should the art of our time give up criticism? No, but it should not lose its deep emotional content and the value of the power to arouse the observer solely by the visual elements, either!
Johan Wahlstrom's entire oeuvre is layered and substantial, but also unusually propulsive. As we look at the changes in his artistic features that create a protean range from structured and rational acrylic drawings (in the form of a painting) to the gestural overstretch of "poured" lines, it becomes clear to us that we have an uncompromising author, an artist who does not allow himself or others to capture him in the repetitiveness of what has better marketability. In his selection of works for the Berlin exhibition, Wahlstrom presents his paintings, which, with an expressive painterly gesture, may evoke indirect models, but contain a whole range of authentic authorial "records", especially of human faces.
What are these faces that the artist elaborates in some of his other works, stripping the painting and elevating the black and white facial expressions? They are direct descriptions of perceived collective emotions. As the black-and-white series goes by the name "Disconnecting", we could talk here about connectedness, about the global interconnectedness that made the world from that immediate, haptic, local and known, to incomprehensibly large, and thus every individual extremely small in proportion to it. Never has the German word Angst (the feeling of deep, deep anxiety) seemed so close, familiar to everyone, even normal, than in this new century. But the artists' sympathy and empathy also grew and became more refined; again that German romantic Weltschmerz came to surface, which signifies the pain that an individual feels in sympathy with the suffering of the world. Creating as a reaction to the circumstances then becomes a necessity, the last drop that makes the cup run over. Creation filled with emotions can be an honest speech (or answer), the greatest form of action, and not a calculated gesture that aims to be contemporary.
It is precisely these aforementioned settings that can be clearly seen in Wahlstrom's oeuvre. He is by no means giving up being a painter, an artist who has harnessed the range of his intellectual and emotional qualities to the chariots of the contemporary moment. His expressive gesture, which in itself carries a strong emotion, is in conjunction with representations of human faces that explain basic thoughts and visual codes of colors and drawings in a language more understandable to the average observer, such as the medieval Biblia pauperum. Not at all compromising, but merely suggestive, the artist found an intuitive way to convey his intimate spiritual states. An artist is always the one who is in the world, but not of the world. His (and our) outer epidermis, the facade, hide the inner world of turmoil, doubt, fragility, emotional charge, aspirations, empathy, desire for expression. It is only through the work of art that we can only partially (!) gain insight into the inner universe of those people who, through their own creation, are most directly connected to the creative Source and collective consciousness. When an artist has a firm certainty about what he does, then there is no need for condescension, compromise nor weakness. Johan Wahlstrom's desire for change is precisely one of the indicators of his foundation in what he does, coexistence with the idea he is thinking about and the object he is shaping. His painting possesses that subtle, refined harmony of reality and criticism, of the outer and inner world, of the mind and heart.
Marin Ivanovich
On Balance Between Art and Criticism: Johan Wahlstrom's Recent Works
Just as there is an insurmountable gap between aesthetic and ethical ideals between Antiquity and Modern art, from the beginning of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st, the thought of art is overwhelmed by an insurmountable amount of philosophical, sociological, psychological, gender, racial, market, and all other issues, to such an extent that the fundamental artistry should be ashamed if it's not filled with all that content. Psychology, to be as scientific as possible, renounces the psyche (Greek for the soul), and contemporary art seems to strive to be current as a journalist. Should the art of our time give up criticism? No, but it should not lose its deep emotional content and the value of the power to arouse the observer solely by the visual elements, either!
Johan Wahlstrom's entire oeuvre is layered and substantial, but also unusually propulsive. As we look at the changes in his artistic features that create a protean range from structured and rational acrylic drawings (in the form of a painting) to the gestural overstretch of "poured" lines, it becomes clear to us that we have an uncompromising author, an artist who does not allow himself or others to capture him in the repetitiveness of what has better marketability. In his selection of works for the Berlin exhibition, Wahlstrom presents his paintings, which, with an expressive painterly gesture, may evoke indirect models, but contain a whole range of authentic authorial "records", especially of human faces.
What are these faces that the artist elaborates in some of his other works, stripping the painting and elevating the black and white facial expressions? They are direct descriptions of perceived collective emotions. As the black-and-white series goes by the name "Disconnecting", we could talk here about connectedness, about the global interconnectedness that made the world from that immediate, haptic, local and known, to incomprehensibly large, and thus every individual extremely small in proportion to it. Never has the German word Angst (the feeling of deep, deep anxiety) seemed so close, familiar to everyone, even normal, than in this new century. But the artists' sympathy and empathy also grew and became more refined; again that German romantic Weltschmerz came to surface, which signifies the pain that an individual feels in sympathy with the suffering of the world. Creating as a reaction to the circumstances then becomes a necessity, the last drop that makes the cup run over. Creation filled with emotions can be an honest speech (or answer), the greatest form of action, and not a calculated gesture that aims to be contemporary.
It is precisely these aforementioned settings that can be clearly seen in Wahlstrom's oeuvre. He is by no means giving up being a painter, an artist who has harnessed the range of his intellectual and emotional qualities to the chariots of the contemporary moment. His expressive gesture, which in itself carries a strong emotion, is in conjunction with representations of human faces that explain basic thoughts and visual codes of colors and drawings in a language more understandable to the average observer, such as the medieval Biblia pauperum. Not at all compromising, but merely suggestive, the artist found an intuitive way to convey his intimate spiritual states. An artist is always the one who is in the world, but not of the world. His (and our) outer epidermis, the facade, hide the inner world of turmoil, doubt, fragility, emotional charge, aspirations, empathy, desire for expression. It is only through the work of art that we can only partially (!) gain insight into the inner universe of those people who, through their own creation, are most directly connected to the creative Source and collective consciousness. When an artist has a firm certainty about what he does, then there is no need for condescension, compromise nor weakness. Johan Wahlstrom's desire for change is precisely one of the indicators of his foundation in what he does, coexistence with the idea he is thinking about and the object he is shaping. His painting possesses that subtle, refined harmony of reality and criticism, of the outer and inner world, of the mind and heart.
Marin Ivanovich
Curator, Museum Director
