In on | auf, the Swedish artist Mikael Olsson undertakes a photographic interpretation of the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron’s and the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s temporary pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery in London. By investigating the traces of their creative processes in their archives, and exploring the relation between their pavilion and its shifting contexts, Olsson creates images that follow and go beyond the object, creating visual narratives uncovering issues of memory, identity and perception. The Hungarian author Péter Nádas introduces the artist in his essay.
MikaelOlsson was born in 1969 in Lerum and is based in Stockholm, Sweden. He studied photography at the University of Gothenburg. In his previous work Södrakull Frösakull (Steidl, 2011) he portrays the relationship between man, nature and architecture in a series of images that invoke questions concerning memory, space, time and structures. In addition to solo exhibitions including those at the Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin/Stockholm, and Arthur Ross Gallery Columbia University, New York City, Olsson has taught at ETH Zürich.
The Swedish artist Mikael Olsson (born 1969) here explores the heritage of Bruno Mathsson, one of Swedish modernism's leading designers, by colonizing and interacting with the remains of In Frösakull, a house that Mathsson both designed and inhabited. In another of Mathsson's houses, named Södrakull, which has been better preserved, Olsson acted like a spy, sneaking around the exterior of the house with his camera.
Mikael Olsson: Soedrakull Froesakull