MAGIC NIGHT IN DAYLIGHT!
HANNA LILJENBERG, KARIN ROY ANDERSSON, MARTA MATTSSON & TOVE KNUTS
15 JUNE - 29 JUNE, 2022

Every year in Sweden, on the Friday that falls between June 19 and June 25, folks celebrate the start of a unique national holiday kicking off the beginning of the country’s unusually long 5-month summer. It’s a night festival characterized by bright lights, large pillars decorated with beautiful green grass and colorful flowers, and no shortage of great food, music and dancing with friends and family. This summer - GalleryO is proud to announce a special exhibition where we invite four distinguished Swedish contemporary jewelry artists to share their work with the people of Korea. We aim to create a safe place for the pandemic- exhausted Korean audience to interact freely with the artists’ work, in effect taking the same energy from the Magic Night in Daylight and recreating it in Seoul.

Hanna Liljenberg, Karin Roy Andersson, Marta Mattsson & Tove Knuts

Sweden

● HANNA LILJENBERG ●
I was born in 1982 and I grew up on the west coast of Sweden whose character reflect in my jewellery. I have always used painting as my main way of expressing and I studied art for several years before I started at HDK, School of Design and Crafts, in Gothenburg Sweden 2OO6. I am one of the founders of Four gallery in Gothenburg.
My sources of inspiration are often harsh natural or industrial as seaside barnacles or sharp iron. I am also fascinated of the human body, about its ability to both amaze and dismay, and how we use clothes and accessories to reflect who we are, or who we want to be.
The fascination for the body and the stunning brutality of nature is the foundation for the work in my within-series. Is it a twig or a vein? Delicate petals or something more like an organ? These abstract floral shapes are in collision between the organic and the constructed. I love working in paper because of its stunning qualities of expressions,
its lightness and flexibility. For me there is something soothing repeatingly cut, fold and colour these paper pieces as and shape them into a manmade vegetation able to dress the body.

● KARIN ROY ANDERSSON ●
Midsommarafton/Midsummer eve is a tradition celebrated in the end of June, when the hours of sunlight reaches its peak. During the day there is dancing, an overload of flower decorations and food. The celebration often turns into an almost hedonic party and the light midsummer night is filled with magic, romantic and even erotic myths. It’s a night of adventures, beauty, nature and of course – jewellery!
For a long time, I have been working with plastics. Waste material that I search for in garbage containers and ditch-banks, but some years ago a Sami colleague introduced me to a new material - naturally tanned reindeer skin. In a way it is also a waste material that is not always used after reindeer slaughter. The long tradition of leatherwork and the organic material awakens thoughts about heritage, knowledge and maintenance of craft traditions.

● MARTA MATTSSON ●
Sometimes I see beauty in things that other people find strange or are even repulsed by. I become fascinated when there is something you do not want to see and the feeling you get when you do not want to look at something, yet you still do. My jewellery deals with the tension that lies between attraction and repulsion. I take seemingly inappropriate materials, making ordinary and familiar objects seem extraordinary and unfamiliar.
In the 18th century many new breeds of animals and plants were discovered and it was the main era of cabinets of curiosities. People collected rarities because it gave them the feeling of being in the presence of something extraordinary and marvellous. The cabinets of curiosities were not meant to sympathize with the creatures on display, only marvel over their oddity. In a world where not many new and exotic breeds are discovered I use dead creatures in my pieces to evoke wonder. The creatures are transformed and reborn; given a new life as objects of astonishment.

● TOVE KNUTS ●
My work is about value, craft and traditions, I'm known for my soft organic shapes, often crotcheted in pastel colours, but also for making jewellery from self made `garbage ́ and things I find in the streets. My latest project started in my dead father ́s wood workshop and is called DAD LENNART AND I. He was a skilled wood craftsman and he left a workshop full of finished, almost-finished and unfinished pieces behind him, along with
a lot of other things that he collected during his life. He never threw anything away, instead he put all his “good-to-have” things in a sort of an archive. The starting point has been my Dad and his remains. The work is a dialogue between us where we connect in what we have in common, but the project also reflects the contrasts in our differences. Dad lived in his house in the forest and used only natural materials in his work. I ended up in the city and have a passion for artificial, man-made materials. He collected special pieces of wood and stones, I collect my own and others' rubbish, mostly plastic. The jewelry that is the result of the work expresses these contrasts and similarities.