The first days of January 2021 were artist Anna Stina Rehnström’s last. At the same moment that her life ended in the suites after a sudden brain hemorrhage, an artistry that since the 70s has depicted world political events as well as emotional moods, with a peculiar touch of humor and seriousness, raptness and care, subtlety and a satirical eye, went out.

Each day is represented by a space that brings together works and processes from an artistry that spans five decades. Here we can follow Rehnström’s early drawing until her last days. Several video works, often with one’s own face hidden or distorted, are interspersed with semi-abstract oil paintings where colorful and extravagant brushstrokes meet a more restrained brushwork in subdued gray tones. Sculptural objects and excerpts from the lifelong writing, take place next to documentation from collective mammoth projects that aimed to establish new contact surfaces between art and society.

The memorial exhibition does not claim to call in or summarize artistry. Instead, the exhibited works can be seen as fragments, traces or signs of a constantly ongoing movement. An artistic movement that was in no way focused on a predictable goal, but instead persistently oscillating, sometimes resting, but always ready to deal with both the market adaptation of the cynical art world and the existential banalities of small life.

Curator: Henning Rehnström

In collaboration with Nils Rehnström, Martin Smith Rehnström and Jim SmithRehnström

Press:

Omkonst

Text: Leif Mattsson