Friday 22 June 2018

Artist Lars Lerin at Liljevalchs Gallery & Midsommar

Yesterday I had a lovely afternoon looking at art with my mum and my girls. It's summer holidays now so we have to fill up the days with fun things to see and do...and cake..there is always a lot of cake during the holidays. But the cake is quite necessary to have the energy to traipse around the galleries and museums that I drag my family to,  I assure you ;-)

We went to Liljevalchs Gallery to see the Lars Lerin exhibition and I really loved it... Each room had a different theme, very varied in subject matter but all done with his beautiful moody painting style, where it is as much about what details he chooses to leave out as what he puts in.


Some of the paintings were epicly huge, with so much going on...only a very observant, obsessive  and meticulous type of character would have the patience to paint these types of works.

I was particularly wowed by the library room, where he has painted life sized libraries of books and folders. It's a statement about the digitisation of things I guess but what I love is that whilst the books look totally real at a glance, you can't actually read one single word on the spines. They are all like incomprehensible meta books...bizarre but cool.


And I also found the room of interiors paintings kind of funny, to paint such banal things seems so strange...
This is what accompanied these paintings...

And it kind of made me smile inwardly because I do find this type of decor very common here in Sweden, and so totally boring. Lars absolutely captures this sense on sameness and tedious conformity.

The paintings of ornate architecture were also beautiful...




There is so much more to see and it's quite fascinating... I also highly recommend the cakes and pastries in the cafe. I sampled several different things and all were delightful!

On the wall in the cafe are hundreds of photos of stray cats and dogs which was quite sad really... sweet and sad. As a massive animal lover, I find it a bit upsetting to see the look in some of their wee faces. Only the unspeakable deliciousness of the pastry goods took the edge off ;-)



Well it is midsommar weekend here in Sweden, which is quite a big deal here and we have appalling weather for it. So I won't be going out and dancing around no pagan totems this weekend but rather staying in and baking naughty treats with my daughters... YUM




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