My colleague Maarit Nilsson Polet stormed to work on a gloomy autumn morning in 2008 and was quite lyrical after a visit to Galleri Charlotte Lund in Stockholm. There she had seen an exhibition with Jenny Granlund’s drawings and thought that we absolutely must invite her to exhibit here in Södertälje. I thought it was a very good idea and that it could also be a good opportunity to show Charlotta Abrahamsson’s wire installations. In addition, an opportunity to invite a local son, the glass artist Jonas Rooth.

Jenny Granlund’s large drawings consist of a collection of different pattern elements, print letters, clouds, lightning and winding plants all done in pencil. She stays within a gray scale mostly and diligently uses the different shades of graphite – soft – hard every now and then. She draws and erases on large stretched paper jokes. Her large graffiti-inspired drawings have subtle titles such as “When faith packed up and went home” or “An unshakable feeling of unease”. The world of motifs could be compared to the psychedelic images of the 1970s. Here in the exhibition, we have chosen to show four drawings with the approximate dimensions 150 × 300 cm.

Charlotta Abrahamsson had made a strong impression on me when she participated in the group exhibition “Newly Painted” at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 2007. “Newly Painted” was shown in the Academy’s Eastern Gallery. Her contribution to the exhibition consisted of a large number of black threads. She threads tightly from ceiling to floor in the part of the room she is assigned. The lighting in the room also added an exciting shadow play. To be able to explain in more detail to my co-workers what I saw, it became – “It looks like she sewed the room together with black thread”. Here in the art gallery, she uses the full volume of the space and adds a number of sculptural white shapes, which are illuminated with colored light.

Jonas Rooth is an old acquaintance. We met in 2005 in connection with him performing an artistic decorating assignment at Ljungbackens home for elderly people in Järna. A large installation in the house’s entrance roof filled with imaginative glass flowers in strong clear colors. It is exciting because he dresses the same color scale: bright green, bright yellow, bright red, orange, etc. Since 1993, he blows his studio glass in his own studio. In Jonas Rooth’s previous glass art, you can see clear influences from the Venetian glass and Swedish kurbits.

We hope that you, our visitors, will find that the exhibition adds an experience to the summer of 2011 to bring into the autumn darkness.

Welcome to Södertälje konsthall and a special welcome to Charlotta, Jenny and Jonas.

Södertälje 24 May 2011

Kristina Möller, curator