Hudiksvallsgatan 8, Stockholm
Open by appointment
info@antics.se

Sam Pulitzer
Does it still snow in Providence?
October 26 - November 30 2024

You promise yourself never to drag your future kid into your art or your writing but when the oxytocin hits it hits differently. The three of us roam the Westcoastian inland landscape just beyond summertime pretending to be a Stone Age family in search for the gold of the forest, chanterelles. We love free food and especially one that is priced 449 SEK a kilo back in the capital. How does one index something so expensive yet so free, so precious yet abundant? We solve this by picking more than we’ll ever clean, parboil, freeze, re-heat and eat and will later leave it to rot in brown paper bags meant for recycling in the warmth of our kitchen. If the fruit of the earth were bought for a song, would there be any need to talk about the weather?

The roam generated the idea to turn the table and ask Sam the questions. Did you read Walden as a teenager? Were you a teacher’s pet? Does free will exist? Does the Pope have a funny hat? If, then?

Back in the car, baby Rosa fixates her 7-week old gaze onto a little neon-yellow fish, one of several stuffed animals (deep-sea creatures) and shapes (stars) that together make up the baby mobile attached to her baby car seat. She looks like a little cartoon mermaid that has just hit her head with a halo of objects spinning above her. The mobile was a hand-me-down gift from Romy, now 3 years old, via her father Sam. Children love babies because babies make them feel like big girls. It’s Rosas first Educational Complex and its terrific because she loves it, despite probably not being able to identify these stuffed symbols as stand-ins for actual fish, nor the concept of “fish”, nor the gravity of the “universe” or the zero gravity of the ”sea” that the mobile imitates, unless this knowledge lies dormant in her small body, all of us having been amoebas in our previous lives.

Max wrote a stream-of-consciousness text for the group show Riffs earlier this spring that riffed on how he’d gotten to know each artist as well as guessing their hometown and their age. Sam was one of them. Max guessed that Sam was probably born in the mid-80s, perhaps in 1984 (or was it in 83?) and maybe in the state of New York. Sam contributed to the show with three questions scribbled around a door in the gallery. All of Sam’s questions come with a given answer and a glossary that explains their components in detail. Despite putting all strings attached to this rhetorical Jeopardy on display, each question takes you on a Little Big Adventure, assumingely differing depending on your socio-economical background and mood of the day. When Katarina on two occasions says that she finds it hard to entertain each question in its entirety and needs to digest them in bits, Sam answers with the questions “Oh, really?” and “What?”. Later, and curious about how abstract Sam could get, we approach him offering him to expand on these questions together with us. What would he show? Nothing?

Sam had set up a provisional work area in front of a window that seemed to act as a portal for the New England goes Hammarby Sjöstad Gothic drawings that were laid out on the table underneath, bridging two distant places that according to Sam are not that distant at all, when you come to think of it. Katarina eagerly wanted to speak about the aesthetics of conceptual art. These days, something can look like a Hanne Darboven drawing but it’s not a score for something that has taken place or will take place, it’s just a pretty drawing. What’s with that?

Our second meeting takes place at the gallery. The suggested framing reminds Max of his very dear Lillehammer -94 Magical Moments hockey card that is now worth 10 USD on eBay. Sam remembers the penalty shot by Peter Forsberg. If [a landscape beyond springtime] an inverted world were a matter of limited concern, would there be any need to suffer [fools] evil gladly? Katarina suggests that obscurity is an essentially neutral quality that can be added to artworks, like, say, yellow or comic. We offer Sam black coffee and a Snickers, both which he politely declines.

Den glada festen
SAK + Antics + Éva Mag
September 27 - September 28 2024

Hej Antics!

Antics är ett nytt galleri som drivs av konstnärerna Max Ronnersjö och Katarina Sylvan, beläget på Hudiksvallsgatan i Stockholm. Under våren 2024 har Antics visat verk av Dan Graham, en separatutställning med fotografen och konstnären Anders Edströms serie Paints samt grupputställningen Riffs, med inslag som en konsert av Mai Edström och release av nya titlar från Renate förlag. På inbjudan av Market Art Fair ansvarade Antics för en konstbokhandel och arrangerade ett program med läsningar och performance under mässan. Antics fokus är att vitalisera Stockholms konstscen genom att stötta konstnärliga praktiker med konceptuella ingångar till utställningsrummet. I förlängningen ser Max och Katarina Antics som ett konstverk i sig, en reflektion över konstnärens möjligheter att arbeta med- eller mot konstvärldens strukturer och hierarkier och ett sätt att skapa den konstscen de själva saknat och vill verka i.

– Antics är ett lustfyllt projekt utan utfyllnader. Vi visar bara saker som vi tycker är oerhört bra och när vi känner att det finns ett momentum, vilket kan vara om ett år eller i morgon. Varje konstnär har dessutom sin egen arbetsgång och den vill vi värna om, vare sig det är ett större internationellt namn eller en lokal talang. Dock ser vi gärna att Antics är ett rum där konstnärerna känner friheten att göra något de annars inte hade gjort, i linje med projektet AW som Antics är sprunget ur. säger Max och Katarina.

Hur upplever ni rollbytet, att gå från konstnärsrollen till galleri-rollen?

– Max ser ingen skillnad på att vara konstnär eller gallerist medan Katarina ser “galleristen” som en roll hon tar sig an. För båda är Antics en del av någonting större som de kallar för Art♡Life, ett förhållningssätt som suddar ut gränsen mellan konsten och livet.

Vilka platser för konst vill ni rekommendera? I både Sverige och i utlandet.

– Nyligen besökta platser som vi spontant vill nämna här är Can i Wien, DIA Beacon Upstate New York, Lars Friedrich i Berlin, Galleri Kanaan här i Stockholm och hällristningarna i Tanum.

Ni har ju som ni nämner även en fot i konstbokens förlovade värld. Berätta om era topp-3 konstböcker

– En aktuell topp-3+1: Jef Geys Kempens Informatieblad och Kulturmagasinet Vargen som varit inspirationskällor till Kärlet, Antics konstfilosofiska tidskrift som utkommer med ojämna mellanrum och senast i samband med Dan Grahamutställningen i våras. Nadia och Häxornas skrifter; Nadia Maghder har ställt ut på galleriet och Häxorna läste när vi hade bokhandel och performanceprogram på Market Art Fair. Katarina vill nämna Mike Kelleys Why I Got Into Art (Vaseline Muses) och Max vill ta tillfället att minnas Pär Darrell, en vän från Valand tillika karaktär med en attityd som nog var för stor för Sverige, som gjorde flera oförglömliga zines om fenomen som rave och graffiti. Till minne av Pär gjordes en bok av HOV:PRESS, som ni alla är välkomna att komma och titta i på galleriet. – Hösten öppnar med Den glada festen tillsammans med SAK. Därefter ser vi en separatutställning med Sam Pulitzer med vernissage i oktober. I slutet av november visas aldrig tidigare visade bilder ur Gunvor Nelsons arkiv aktiverat av en 16mm filmvisning av hennes film Take Off. I december är det Antics informationsmässa, 2.0-versionen av förra årets konstbokmässa och inspirerad av utställningen Information på MoMa 1970. Antics beskriver mässan som “en slags casual men elegant hobbymässa där konstnärer och vänner till galleriet presenterar sina hjärteämnen genom samtal och power-pointpresentationer, för att bredda idén om konstnärens självpublicering.”

Med detta sagt är Antics i fortsatt rörelse och schemat är under ständig omförhandling.


Sara Walker 2024

Riffs
Channa Bianca, Saskia Holmkvist, Nadia Maghder, Sam Pulitzer, Carla-Luisa Reuter
May 15 - June 15

Around 2013 I worked at a restaurant in Gothenburg and that summer we were swimming at Saltholmen and I burned myself on a jellyfish, that was when Channa Bianca came walking over the rocks, we had probably met before but I have a memory of her there and then, do not know if she was an artist then but I have followed her painting and drawing since then more or less. We showed Channa at the subway gallery Kl. 9 as well and I have one of her butt paintings on the bedroom wall that I bought from her in connection with that show. Channa and Katarina organize a study circle every other Tuesday at Hägerstensåsen’s medborgarhus called Conversation Piece which is sometimes misspelled by the community center staff to peace which is fun. She is probably from Stockholm and born in the early 1990s I think.

I met Saskia Holmkvist long before that at the preparatory art school I spent my first CSN money on, a strange place, it was just after I had done my military service and Saskia visited and showed her film Interview with Saskia Holmkvist and I was completely floored, partly because it was so good and partly because Saskia was so cool, I hadn’t thought that an artist could be like that, there was something about that attitude to art that appealed to me, the form followed the concept. We met a few years ago when I was working at a kindergarten, she’s probably also from Stockholm, born in the 70s definitely.

I met Sam Pulitzer at Rehnsgatan 3 where I helped Beata with the space she ran for a few years around 2015-16 and Sam had an exhibition there with a lot of hay and this and that, a couple of actors and Sam performed a kind of MUD, I don’t think we talked much but even before that I knew his girlfriend Marie (don’t know how, mutual friends maybe) and a while ago they moved to Stockholm and then Katarina and I were there for a brunch and ate a lot of Swiss cheese, then it was important that we did not check his latest art but we returned a few weeks later and had a real studio visit, or home visit - he drew in a room in the apartment and he showed us his questions, very smart to show questions as art and we talked about Conceptual art. It’s text and his own handwriting, we have very similar handwriting, a mix between regular text and cursive style, us who never really learned to write nicely, he was probably born in the mid-80s like me, maybe we are born in the same year. Maybe in the state of New York?

Katarina knows Carla-Luisa Reuter since her time in Berlin, I have never met Carla, only on video link or Google meets to be platform specific. That is to have met these days I guess, I was struck by her socialist realist painting, I thought of the futurists and runaway steam locomotives, but a girl in uniform who kind of pulls the locomotive behind her in an invisible chain I imagine. Carla-Luisa was probably born in the 1990s, I think maybe in the Berlin area.

Nadia Maghder came in on a whim as we thought she was missing from the show, she showed a Falu sausage taped to the wall once at AW and her pipas work and she was in our apartment exhibition at Alphas’. We had a meeting in her studio in Ingenting and just before we left she showed us her photo of a shopping cart she found at an ICA, it was a lonely old man’s groceries. The artworks she has done, there are not many I think, are all good; Falu sausage, shopping cart, sunflower seeds, door, mail. She has an attitude and integrity that I respect, she is probably the youngest of the bunch born in 1992 if I may guess.

Max Ronnersjö
Stockholm 2024

Antics at Market Art Fair

May 17 - May 19

Every art fair should have a section dedicated to art books. In line with Antics’ mission to supply Stockholm with what is does not yet know that it needs and to vitalise its art scene with conceptual approaches to exhibition making, Antics will take over the Spritmuseum shop and there house a selection of art books and artists’ books, activated by a programme of performances and readings.

Performance by Mai Edström
May 4, 6-8pm

Anders Edström
Paints 2
April 11 - May 11

There’s a small hill next to a golf course that allows for one to be undisturbed. The golfers don’t touch the equipment and the set-up can be left there for days. Edström awaits a day with the right light and weather conditions and gets to work. He sets up one or more tables, preferably close to the ground in order to take pictures from all angles, high and low. On each table he puts a white foam board. It must be perfectly levelled. The foam boards are marked with a date and a number. Edström photographs the foam board with the bucket of paint that is soon to be used on top of it. This connects place, date, paint and results in preparation for a future systematic selection process, as this is an accumulative endeavour. Edström pours paint onto the foam boards. The act demands both focus and a certain tolerance for gravity’s workings, the paint’s viscosity and especially wind-related accidents, though these can be circumvented by creating a windshield from a wooden plank. One pour per table is enough. The shapes become very similar. The shapes also become very different. Some pools are better than others. Desirable is a centred, neat circle with an approximate diameter of ten centimetres but no matter the outcome the pools must be photographed. Black oil-based lacquer has proven to give the most favourable results with properties similar to a mirror. Other colours, paints and lacquers can also give satisfying results. Everything is reflected in the pools. Clouds. Trees. Edström photographs the pools of paint with a Nikon FM3A. Sometimes the paint matures beautifully over three days or so upon which more photographs can be taken. Sometimes the rain has completely destroyed it.

Dan Graham
Sculpture and photo
Release for the zine Kärlet - Dan Graham edition
February 21 - March 7