NEVVEN is proud to present Artifacts a group exhibition curated by Swedish artist Joakim Ojanen. The show focuses on artworks depicting objects and uses this timely and peculiar subject matter as the outset for a survey on contemporary painting.
The idea for the exhibition was to collect some of my favourite painters in the same space. Like most people I’ve always been fascinated by objects, from the mobile spinning over me when I was a baby to marbles, action figures, pogs, lighters, clothes, fidget spinners, figurines. One or a few obsessions at a time for as long as I can remember. What is this? What is it good for? How did they make it? Why did they make it? How does it feel? How much does it weigh? Ever since my interest for painting started, one of my favourite motifs are painted artifacts. Man made objects that you could tell meant something to the artist who painted them.
Joakim Ojanen
The action behind the representation of objects by means of other objects (and specifically painting) is one of the earliest forms of art and at the same time an operation that strikes tensions and relations between the objects, their artistic corresponsives and creators which keeps intriguing philosophers and artists alike. It recalls Object—Oriented Ontology, its concept of allure and the questioning of the relations between subject/object and animate/inanimate. It’s also as simple as the Pokémons or each one of the collectibles, found objects or memorabilia that fascinates people since the dawn of times and even more in nowadays consumeristic society.
Vetted by Joakim Ojanen’s vision and sensibility and including artists from England, Germany, Japan, Sweden and the United States — Artifacts brings together an exciting and intergenerational group exploring and playing with the possibilities of objects in painting and paintings as objects.