Moderna Museet exhibition catalogue no. 416:

Björn Lövin -The Surrounding Reality

Co-publishers: Moderna Museet & Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König
Texts: Gitte Ørskou, Matilda Olof-Ors, Rasmus Fleischer, Maria Lind & Helena Mattsson.
Curator: Matilda Olof-Ors
Concept and Editorial Work: Matilda Olof-Ors, Jonas Williamsson & Peo Olsson
Design: Jonas Williamsson
Photography: Albin Dahlström, Mats B, Ayao Yamazaki.
Print: Narayana Press.

About the exhibition:

Björn Lövin -The Surrounding Reality
Moderna Museet
2.4 – 18.9 2022
Stockholm

With carefully chosen details, Björn Lövin (1937–2009) built up fictional worlds, like film sets, which the visitor could step into. In the exhibition “The Surrounding Reality”, three of Björn Lövin’s extensive environments have been reconstructed. Then, as now, visitors can enter the environments themselves and experience the art from up close.
None of Björn Lövin’s original environments were preserved after being presented in their respective exhibitions in the 1970s and 1980s. The environments that you can see now in the exhibition are thus reconstructions interpreting and recreating a similar atmosphere as when the works were first shown.
Extensive and winding research has been required to build up the environments. Based on photographs, films and archive documents, objects have been identified. These are the three environments that you will encounter in the exhibition:
Consumer in Infinity and “Mr P’s hoard”, L’image and C – The struggle for reality.

Curator: Matilda Olof-Ors


About Björn Lövin

Björn Lövin expanded traditional art genres and was one of the first Swedish artists in the late 1960s to make spatial installations, called environments at the time.
He was born in Falun in 1937. In his youth Lövin studied in Barcelona, later attending Stockholm University and Uppsala University to study education, scientific theory and information technology.
Despite his lack of formal artistic training, he had his first exhibition at Galleri Mejan in 1970, an early version of the more comprehensive exhibition Consumer in Infinity and “Mr P’s Hoard” – two environments by Björn Lövin that was presented at Moderna Museet the following year.
His large scale works were critical to totalitarian systems, ranging from the People’s Home (Folkhemmet) to the consumption society, which includes some and excludes others and attract by offering an image of safety, but at the cost of individual freedom. His first solo show at Moderna Museet was curated by Pontus Hultén and later included solo shows at Centre Pompidou in Paris, Liljevalchs and Kulturhuset in Stockholm and at Malmö Konsthall amongst others.