Lunds Konsthall Sweden

February 5 – May 8, 2022

The Playground Project at Lunds Konsthall dedicates an important chapter to the abstract play sculpture, invented in Sweden by the sculptor Egon Møller-Nielsen in 1949 (Tufsen) followed by Ägget (The Egg, 1951), Spiral Slide, etc.

The Playground Project also highlights the contribution of the founders of the Stockholm School of Park Design, Osvald Almqvist and Holger Blom, who designed parks and play environement with nordic natural features (rocks, ponds, medows), and created staffed special play lots (parklek) in the neighbourhood parks. The film Lek på fullt allvar is dedicated to Arvid Bengtsson, city gardener of Gothenburg and advocat for the adventure playground in Sweden.

The exhibition features Mats Eriksson Dunér’s film Aktivering Samtal! (Activation Conversation!, 2020) that looks back at the activist urban interventions of the Aktion Samtal collective. The group organized a number of play actions in Stockholm in 1968, and together with Palle Nielsen, built the seminal show ‘Modellen – en modell for ett kvalitativt samhälle’ (‘A Model for a Qualitative Society’), at Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

The „activism“ section is completed with two collectives from Germany: Spielwagen (founded 1979 in Berlin East) and Spielklub (opend between 1970-72 in Berlin West), KEKS (founded in Munich and Nuremberg in 1968), Urban Deadline (founded in New York in 1968), and Riccardo Dalisi (architect, Naples).

At Lunds konsthall, the connections to Swedish sculptural tradition are highlighted with works by artists such as Egon Møller-Nielsen, Pye Engström, Axel Nordell and Mariana Manner.

Review in Dagens lekplatser är helt värdelösa, in Expressen by Sara Berg, 19.2.2022

Review in Art is for Everyone, in Nordic Art Review by Frans Josef Petersson, 7.3.2022

Review På Lunds konsthall framstår lekplatser som fickor av motstånd by Christine Antaya in Sydsvenskan, 12.2.2022

Konst är rena barnleken på Lund konsthall, by David Richter, Sveriges Radio, 2.2.2022

Har Lunds konsthall blivit en lekstuga? by Alexander Agrell, in Sydsvenskan, 5.2.2022

All fotos: Olof Nimar

posted on March 10, 2022; July 22, 2022