I am delighted to be able to start the autumn with my third personal exhibition at the LMNO gallery in Brussels. More info here.
Since she emerged on to the artistic scene in the 1990’s, Maria Friberg (1966, Sweden) has been exploring the dynamics that govern our time, by means of her painstakingly choreographed photographs and videos. Her images bring together a carefully controlled aesthetics and a sense of the uncanny. This unusual approach has been attracting a growing attention on the international scene to an artist who is already recognised as a significant figure in contemporary art from Scandinavia.
In this new exhibition, ‘Inherited Dreams’, specifically designed for LMNO, Maria Friberg proposes an in-depth exploration of inter-generational dynamics. She questions social roles, in particular those linked to masculinity, through the prism of generational inheritance/transmission. Like a thread stretching between tradition and modernity, ancestral practices and values clash with the imperatives of a world in rapid mutation.
The six photographs in this new series intersperse indoor scenes and natural landscapes, creating a visually bewildering dialogue. The masculine domestic elements have been selected carefully for their capacity to evoke specific periods and definite social contexts.
They become symbols of the weight of traditions, of codes and of inherited responsibilities.
In the work ‘Inherited Dreams GdRB’, an elderly man is sitting behind a Louis XV style desk. On that desk, various object have been placed with care, including a lamp with a lamp-shade adorned with old portraits, pictured obliquely, of men who seem to be erstwhile figures of power. The patriarch holds a book in his hands, open towards the last few pages, evoking the end of a story. In the foreground, a young man wearing a suit, with naked feet and a pearl necklace, is sitting on a lawn. He is gathering his crossed knees against his breast and resting his head pensively on the desk. Each object in this scene embodies the deep thinking process in which both of them seem immersed, as both guardians of the family heritage and silent architects of the future.
Behind the elderly man, a third character is standing majestically. It is a 500-year-old tree, its bark seeming to protrude out of the image, vibrant and tangible. As always in Maria Friberg’s work, nature is far from being an inert backdrop: much to the contrary, it plays a crucial role. It is a spirited, personified presence, a force with which subjects have to get to grips.
Like a heritage, the tree has been present for dozens of years, it has gone through the generations. It testifies to the importance of contemplating our relationship with nature over the long term. Its temporality, quite different from ours, transcends our personal existence. In this series Maria Friberg seizes on personal yet universal interrogations: what should I deconstruct? In what continuity can I include myself?
‘Inherited Dreams’ isn’t only a peerless aesthetic exploration, it is also a reflection on the way in which generations hand down goods, land, values, traditions and expectations.
Maria Friberg’s work can be found among others in the collections of the Fotomuseum Winterthur, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and Stockholm’s Moderna Museet.
Running from 13 September to 16 November 2024, Wednesday to Saturday from 12 to 6 p.m., and by appointment.
