2022, 2023

Exhibited at Haninge konsthall in the spring 2023, showed at celsius projects, Malmö and another version inaugurated the new art platform CPR² in Brooklyn in 2022

Dear swarm-I, a room swarming of we-me-s is an installed text piece. Large papers form a room to read. How does one read one’s way through a room? How do we read a space?
Paper and documents carry different meanings in our lives, the reading activity becomes a way of tracing and connecting intentions. Large amounts of paper pass through our hands: agreements, letters, instructions, notes, books. The texts in the exhibition Dear swarm-I, a room swarming… are written by the artist and suggest various exchanges between subject and subjects and situations, following Gilbert Simondon’s concept intersubjectivity.

It’s about how one is created in inspiration of and in friction with others – people, phenomena and things. Paper as a material is affected by the handling, if it breaks a fold is imprinted. How the light falls over the surface tells about fibers, roughness and might also create transparency. The papers in Dear swarm-I, a room swarming… have hand-printed text and is the result of a year’s ongoing printing process.

The opening at Haninge konsthall was celebrated with a new performance.

2018

Exhibition at Krognoshuset in Lund,
and in Mellanrummets mekanismer / The mechanisms of the gap together with Tova Fransson presented by Grafikens Hus at Kringlans Konstfönster in Södertälje, curator Ulrika Flink

The works in the exhibition The prediction take further a long-lasting interest in the concept of the nation state. What are the mechanisms and influences on ways to reason that the idea of the nation state have? The prediction handles these issues both in a literal sense by texts distributed as typographical posters, and in the practise of folding lighting filters and using their inherent aspect of changing colours when overlapping. It is abstraction and concretion, and touches prevailing questions of inclusion and exclusion. Who are our sense of solidarity encompassing? The prediction explores if complex structural aspects can be creased formally.
Downstairs a 5,5 meter graphite drawing of the letter i rests on the floor. In Swedish i means ‘in’: a word in it self. i also got other connotations.

Axel Andersson writes about Strand’s working methods: ‘Strand engages with material, mechanics and text in order to explore not the nature but the construction of the figurative and the literal. The turn is both simple and profoundly destabilising. The literal, previously a site for the singular and discrete, inherits the multiplicity and open-endedness of the figurative. The physicality of the material, a key component of these works, is ever so much the end point as the starting one. But no thing is the same after having been conceptually stood on its head. Neither is the figurative speech a new symptom literally materialised. Strand’s art transmits a profound and radical understanding of that each position was always already there in the other.’

Last image show a review from 2018-03-03.

From the press text about The mechanisms of the gap:
Liv Strand’s artistic practice centres round the desire to reshape; in a process that provides a space for something that has not yet fully taken form. Strand is originally from Södertälje and studied at the Royal Institute of Art (1999). Through art the conditions for a collective understanding is explored and negotiated – how it is manifested and how it can disappear. In the exhibition are Strand’s beautifully coloured typographic posters included, where poetic texts twist and turn the foundational construction of the nation state, its inner and outer borders. Strand writes; There is an undefined area for longing / desire / aspirations. It leaks.

Post-truth is described as a symptom of a world where objective facts are no longer the basis of how we gather information or relate to knowledge. Personal beliefs, experience, understanding and feelings create gaps and slippages in relation to objective facts. Truth claims falls flat, power disrupts and new spaces emerge in a configuration of tensions between the concrete and the abstract. Absolute truth was abandoned a long time ago. We now embrace complexity, the uncertainty about truth-claims restrict us to the intermediate, grey zones, structures, contexts, and shifting power relations. How we experience the world is coloured by how we meet, code and process sensory stimulation and information. We interpret and reinterpret in a continual on-going process. Like origami, beautiful hand-folded colour filters are part of the installation of the Art Window. Strand’s work alters the sunlight and creates new colours which overlaps in an on-going process.

Both Fransson and Strand’s use of letterpress printing braces against the tradition, stretching and changing the process by making visible the mechanisms of space, the hand and thought in an on-going continual labour.

2016

Exhibition together with Asako Shiroki at Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin

The exhibition Contiguous notes handles languages of abstraction, as a parallel to techniques for handling material. In Contiguous notes the sculptural works of Asako Shiroki will meet with the typographic interest of Liv Strand. One series of graphic prints takes a close-up view on the spaces within letters themselves, diving into text. The near-sighted view suggests for letters to have a surface scored and marked, and for them to imprint the paper they take position on with their substance, as weight. Another series consists of singularly printed typographical text-posters, completed to make the paper direct itself towards all ends, as one sculpture would. Liv Strand has written the texts for the posters to operate along similar lines as how sculptures convey their message. Some three dimensional objects will be on display together with the posters.

Both artists take a close interest in how the sensitivity of the work activate the senses of the viewer.

The assemblage of materials in Asako Shiroki’s installations include strings and glass to complete their sensations. The way the materials are combined make the parts seemingly interchangeable, as they propose to make up their own alphabet with ever-changing possibilities. Asako Shiroki’s art works often makes a seemingly temporary compound where the components fit into a perfect incision. If one end is set loose all the other sections threaten to break free.

Contiguous notes: by repetition, by utterances, by the silence and where each note of the composition of a work is placed.

The exhibition was opened by Sakato Masaru, Stellvertretender Generalsekretär at the Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin. Dr. Alexander Hofmann, curator of the Japanische Kunst Museum für Asiatische Kunst, held an introduction to the art works.
Taiko Saito played the marimbaphone.

2015

Soloexhibition at Verkstad konsthall in Norrköping

The exhibition Begränsningens anatomi / The anatomy of confinement show new sculptures in dialogue with earlier works and take interest in how present art works can reflect on complex socio-cultural realities. The visitor becomes a factor activating the pieces in literal and figurative senses. The anatomy of confinement explores the notions ‘nation’ and ‘hen’, a newly popular Swedish third person pronoun un-gendered like one, out of aspects of how boundaries and distinctions made are part of the shaping of under- standing on ones present times.

The three parts of installation Quicksand frontier under-standing is presented for the first occasion in Sweden, the work has earlier been shown in Jerusalem, Copenhagen, Berlin and Oslo. These works engages in the foundations of a nation, that is in demarcation.
The anatomy of confinement suggests that we take into consideration how words and notions shape understanding, even on an everyday level of language. The notions we confess to effect our imagination, in the sense of what we think is possible, as the same time as they establish territories. The structures we live limit the conceivable events. Structures set the frames for the manyfold of difference that still exist.

In the exhibition the interest of delimitations goes further to the newly popular, un-gendered third person pronoun ‘hen’, that can be said to erase the gender distinction in the Swedish language. This is presented in the new work text and in the text-posters.

One sculpture of is built to float on the river Motala Ström that passes the Verkstad exhibition space. The art work is made by plexiglass and mirror the surroundings, it wrench the scenery and obscure the line between art and location. The visitors are asked to hand in suggested titles for the sculpture, and the art work will continue to be vague by having several titles mirroring it.

2013

Exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin.
The performance drum session was performed in the exhibition one day, during five hours.

In Non Cover the material is made to discuss. How does a surface shows itself and is presented, in comparison with others. What can be conceived as similarities among images and sensations exposed by series of material? In human perceptions differentiating structuring of perceived information helps to form understanding. The kind of distinctions made by matter and the several parts of the exhibition is in focus in Non Cover.

Non Cover was exhibited in two rooms at the Gallery of Künstlerhaus Bethanien; in the entrance and upstairs. One part is a text that was presented glued to the wall in the entrance space along with some more art works. The text is treated as a text-material in parallel to other materials, it has a place and a surface, and content. It is explanatory analog to all parts of Non Cover, all things are made to create meaning, to moving along a shared plane of abstraction; of language and as human sensations.

A drum session took place in Non Cover. A group consisting of Axel, Marcus, Tilda and Pär created rhythms, or not, together with me, the artist. There were not any specific rhythms that we tried to perform. There were some cues for how to listen and think about intensity. We all had individual ways to relate to what drumming can be. The session was as much on how to form a group in drumming, as on drumming as sequences of sounds.

Go to the publication Non Cover.

2009

A one day sculpture at a pavilion in Tantolunden in Stockholm, in a project by Weld

B was a one day sculpture made out of unprinted newspaper paper, tape and some threads. It had the tree dimensional shape of the letter B. B can mark a place that is secondary or even an event that is not carried out well. B is the first letter in the Swedish word berg for mountain –it has the massiveness of a mountain. B also resembles the shape of mount Ararat, the symbol for the Armenian nation. Armenians living outside of Armenia often builds a small sized model of mount Ararat since they like to be surrounded by mountains.

B was attached to strings and elevated to fill the pavilion, the wind was helping the structure to lift. At one point me and Anna spoke the words beginning with the letter B that came to our minds.

Over a period of two weeks Anna Koch, artistic leader of WELD invited Christoffer Paues, Angela Duran, Susanne Höglin, Ida Lundén, Gustaf Broms, Rutger Sjögrim, Markus Wagner, Liv Strand, Auditiongruppen and herself to occupy, discover or change the place that is made of the pavilion in Tantolunden. The events were filmed and was summarized as a film.

2008

Exhibited at ROM for kunst og arkitektur, Oslo 2008,
and at Centro Cívico San Francisco in Bilbao, at MEM 2010

Sliding Structure is an art work about shape and reshaping. Forms in motion, that creates a dynamic of moments with instantaneous difference.

Sliding Structure is based on the ideas of, and the shapes of tents and banners, both recognizable forms with variable appearances. They might be disparate in their exterior shape and are foremost determined to be either a banner or a tent through their use. The layer of a tent and a banner is a membrane that provides a thin boundary between public and private –or forms the place where a message might be announced publicly. They shapes differ in the way that a tent is used to detail and protect a private space, whereas banners is for communication. In Sliding Structure the shapes are refined into pure, basic constructions, where numerous specific narratives and personal fates and fortunes are hiding.
The exhibition consists of three art works: Sliding structure: it, a mechanical installation built in cooperation with steering engineer Gert-Ove Wågstam. A full movement from banner to tent and back take 6,5 minutes. Opening, a video of openings that gets filled with sound but no imagery of places, it is projected onto a black fabric covering a wall. And a low table with four Text sculptures that cast word shadows.
The work Sliding Structure is built with support from Konstnärsnämnden.
Exhibited in Spain 2010 by support from Musik i Sverige.

Video Clip of Sliding Structure

Video Clip of text-sculptures

2002

Sound installation exhibited at Østfold Kunstnersenter, Fredrikstad, Norway

Four sound pieces can be listened to over headphones placed in the room. The sound pieces are named; Find a place / Finna en plats, Illuminates / Lyser upp, It is mine / Den är min and To dream in color or in black and white / Drömma i färg eller svart/vitt.

The sound pieces are rhythmically constructed out of interviews with several persons, consisting of their stories about relationships between them and things and places. A model in the scale of 80 % out of a room divider is made of a stiff white fabric as a sculptural element in the exhibition.

– Listen to: “Lyser upp” –Illuminates – one of four sound tracks in the exhibition

– Listen to: “Den är min” –It’s Mine – one of four sound tracks in the exhibition

2002

A project carried out in the project room of Gallery Lars Bohman, Stockholm

Bannerproduction was an art project where I made agreements with some of the visitors, that I would make a banner with the message decided by them. And then they would hang their banner-message from their home window, or balcony. Then I photographed the banners, in their presentation and new surrounding – shared to another audience of neighbours and pedestrians – and showed the photos in the gallery space.

2000

A collaboration with artist Kristina Matousch.

HOW / HUR is a streetwork in co-operation with Kristina Matousch, conducted in the streets Hornsgatan, Drottninggatan and Sveavägen in Stockholm.

HOW / HUR was a project that was mapping the knowledge about every day objects. We had taken upon ourselves the task of manufacturing three objects with the help of the bypasser’s knowledge, this without having acquired any prior theoretic information on the various processes. We gathered information among people passing in the street about materials and methods to be able to build or mix these objects our selves. HOW / HUR was structured so that we could use only advises that was shared by someone we met. We assumed the role of the specialist in order to influence the process of production out of our experience of how different advise turned out when practiced.

The HOW / HUR project sprung out of a need to look away from the expertise and try to find other ways to information than trough generally accepted science, since the expertise nowadays has become almost the only approach used to control the production process. We had a feeling that craftmanship among people was vanishing. Most people would rather turn to some appropriate chain store in order to find a solution for whatever needed than asking their neighbor.

A coiled mattress was made outside of a bed shop, a jar of skin lotion was composed by a perfume shop and a sausage was prepared by a hotdog stand. The three objects had been chosen according to their generic appearance so that the discussion could focus on their content. HOW / HUR took place at three different out door locations in Stockholm in October 2000. The locations were chosen in order to provide a comparison between the product we where about to explore the public knowledge about and the corresponding manufactured item –outside the mattress store Kungsängen at Hornsgatan, the perfumery Soleil at Drottninggatan and a kiosk at Sveavägen.

In the publication ‘Publikation (33) HUR’ a diary is presented with selected photographs and fragments from the conversations, one day after the other, that led to progress or not in the production processes. HOW / HUR was made with funding for artistic development from the Royal Institute of Art.
The publication is re-published by the art blog tsnok.se.