Mamma Andersson: Sleepless
Text by Karl Ove Knausgaard
A celebration of the representation, figuration, and classical antiquity in Mamma Andersson’s newest paintings.
"When I look at this collection of pictures, . . . what strikes me first is the image-making capacity itself and the endless stream of images it brings forth and always has brought forth into the world.” —Karl Ove Knausgaard, Mamma Andersson: Sleepless
The Swedish painter Mamma Andersson draws inspiration from a wide range of photographic source materials, art history, filmic imagery, theater sets, and period interiors, as well as the sparse topography of northern Sweden. The paintings and works on paper collected in this volume explore atmosphere and mood through representations of masks, statues, and figurines, which take on a dreamlike, mythical quality in stark silhouettes. While recalling classical genres of still life, landscape, and interiors, this body of work, painted in 2021 and 2022, blends our sense of the past, present, and future.
A companion to the artist’s previous books A Storm Warning and The Lost Paradise, this limited-run publication features a new essay by Karl Ove Knausgaard. The text considers the history and evolution of the human desire to depict our surroundings, placing Andersson’s doubled renderings—“pictures of pictures”—within a tradition of painting not from life but from representations of life.
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Artists: Mamma Andersson
Contributors: Karl Ove Knausgaard
Designer: Greger Ulf Nilson / GunLab
Printer: Narayana Press, Denmark
Publication Date: 2024
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 9.25 × 11.74 in | 23.5 × 30 cm
Pages: 72
Reproductions: 31 illustrations
ISBN: 9781644231234
Retail: $50 | $65 CAN | £38
Status: Available
Mamma Andersson
Born 1962 in Luleå, Sweden, Mamma Andersson studied at the Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm, from 1986 to 1993. Her work has been represented by David Zwirner since 2004. She has had two solo exhibitions at the gallery in New York, including her United States debut in 2006. Her second gallery show in 2010, titled Who is sleeping on my pillow, marked the first time she exhibited alongside her artist-husband Jockum Nordström in concurrent solo exhibitions. She had her first museum solo exhibition in the United States at the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, in 2010, and her first solo exhibition in Ireland at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, in 2009. In 2006, the artist won the Carnegie Art Award, a prestigious prize for Nordic contemporary painting, which received a corresponding exhibition that traveled extensively throughout Europe. In 2007, she was the subject of a critically acclaimed mid-career survey at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, which traveled to the Kunsthalle Helsinki and the Camden Arts Centre, London. Her work was represented in the Nordic Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). Andersson’s works are included in prominent collections internationally, including the Dallas Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Karl Ove Knausgaard is a Norwegian author. He became known worldwide for six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle. He has been described as "one of the 21st century's greatest literary sensations" by the Wall Street Journal. Since the completion of the My Struggle series in 2011, he has also published an autobiographical series entitled The Seasons Quartet, as well as critical work on the art of Edvard Munch.
