Annika Ström, Ten New Love Songs, 1999  
 

Floral motives on colorful music boxes and a painted sky with white cottonball clouds invoke in the viewer a sense of levity and gaiety that characterizes Annika Ström's entire oeuvre. The Swedish artist (who was born in 1964 in Helsingborg) succeeds in humorously challenging stardom in the arts through her exploitation of the strategies of pop culture and the investigation her own position as a female artist in an art world dominated by male gallerists, art critics and curators. Hence the titles of her video works "Artist Film" (1996), "The Artist Live" (1997), etc. Annika Ström has been creating song series, who lyrics and music she writes herself, since 1998.

 

Annika Ström, fern skäl (five reasons), video, 33 seconds, 1999
 
 
When Annika Ström mounts the stage like a pop star and sings her songs, one has to listen carefully to grasp the provoking linguistic components of these harmless-sounding songs. "What do you think of my art? What does she think of my art? What does he think of my art?" or "Why don't you tell me that you don't like my art?"
 
Annika Ström's videos, whose soundtracks are dominated by the "artist's songs", are centered around the banality and the preoccupations of her own everyday life as an artist. Comparable to extracts from a diary, they tell of the artist's visit to her hometown of Helsingborg, to her mother's house, and enjoying the company of friends, painting and the busy hustle and bustle of the streets. Because Annika Ström sees video as a documentary medium, the quality of the cutting and the film itself resembles more an amateur home movie than an "art" film. This allows the artist's video to evoke glimpses of the artist's life and feelings and mirror her habits, her private environment, her dreams and hopes.
 
Annika Ström will be presenting her new work entitled "ten new love songs" for the first time in her exhibition in the Secession. The Main Hall will feature the video of the same name, which was largely shot during her recent stipend to Spitzbergen at the North Pole. Other sequences feature London, Berlin and her hometown of Helsingborg. The artist can be seen singing, but also friends and her mother join in with her songs.
 
The visitor will also be confronted with sound clips from the "ten new love songs" throughout the entire Secession building, which are also available as recordings in the Secession Shop.
 

PUBLICATION

ANNIKA STROEM bilingual. Secession 1999 ___________________ available in the shop

STEVEN BROWER   URS FREI   KENDELL GEERS

EXHIBITION PROGRAM 1999

For further information and photographic material please contact:
 
Tamara Schwarzmayr
Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
presse@secession.at