Love Lundell: On Demon Wings

Turku Art Museum, Studio 17 November 2023 – 7 January 2024

Join us for the press preview on Thursday, 16 November 2023 at 11 am at Turku Art Museum. The artist will be present on the occasion.

Opening on Thursday, 16 November 2023 at 5-7 pm. Welcome!

Dreamlike, mystical, surrealist, but also harboring references to the everyday, Love Lundell’s works unfold in their own world. Executed in a range of muted palette, often in black and white, the paper collages show Lundell’s sovereignty as a drawer. The skillful combination of subtlety and fierceness causes the fascination of an immediate encounter to give way to a quickly deepened state of contemplation.

There is much to discover in Lundell’s mesmerising works. He creates the intriguing wonderlands by sampling images from various sources and recontextualising them to suggest a hallucinatory inner reality. Inspiration is mainly gathered from books, dreams and Lundell’s own childhood. Creating works of rich symbolism, Lundell’s titles serve as guideposts to the underlying narratives that refuse to overexpose the contents but, rather, encourage viewer engagement and interpretation.

Influences of the sublime and of the tradition of Romantic landscape painting can be easily seen, but Lundell adds his contemporary touch to them. The collages often present idyllic nature landscapes inhabited by semi-nude figures, everyday objects and strangely staged situations, offering fragments of narrative to prompt rich flights of imagination, like being on demon wings.

Love Lundell (b. 1981) is a visual artist currently living and working in Stockholm, where he was born and raised. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 2010 in Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Norway. Lundell uses various techniques, including painting, paper collage and print. He has been exhibiting his works actively around the Nordic region and Europe and is represented in many public and private collections. On Demon Wings is his first solo show in Finland.

The exhibition is supported by the Finnish Heritage Agency.

Courtesy of the artist and Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm.