Market Art Fair | Markus Åkesson: Liljevalchs, Stockholm

Influenced by art historical motifs, such as the works of the renaissance Old Masters, Markus Åkesson draws arcane and mystical landscapes on the draped cloths covering his subjects. There is the danse macabre (dance of death), famously depicted by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), and the witch riding backwards on a leaping goat, a well-known engraving by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). But there is also the stylized, floral pattern in Astray (2021-22), deliberately referencing the style of Art Nouveau and constituting a stark visual contrast to the mythical motifs.  

Although the subjects remain unknown to the viewer, melting imperceptibly into the background and surrounding environment, there is a sense of agency among them. Quietly posing before us, watching, turning their veiled faces away from the viewer or caught up in motion as if battling the printed cloth.

The presentation also features a series of handblown glass sculptures, the result of a recent collaboration with Kosta Glassworks in Sweden. The semi-abstract sculptures are blown freehand into swelling, ornate and tactile shapes with smoothly polished surfaces, transferring Åkesson’s profound interest in the strange and unknown onto the medium of glass.

Markus Åkesson (b. 1975) lives and works in Nybro, Småland, Sweden. He has been participating in a large number of exhibitions at galleries, art fairs and institutions in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, London, Vilnius and Sweden. Åkesson had an early focus on the French art scene and has made several solo exhibitions at Galerie Da-End in Paris (the most recent in the autumn of 2020, "Strange Days") and the French art fairs Galeristes, Art Paris and YIA Art Fair. He has also been shown in several solo exhibitions at VIDA Museum, Öland, Sweden and in the retrospective exhibition "Sleeping Beauty" at Kalmar Art Museum 2018, the museum's most visited exhibition to date.

Åkesson is represented at The Public Art Agency of Sweden, Fondation Francès, VIDA Museum, Småland Museum as well as in several private collections, including Alice Walton Family Collection, Château du Rivau, and Jacques-Antoine Granjon Collection. He has made several public commissions, the most recent being the bronze sculpture "When the leaves come falling down" for a church in Småland, Sweden and the most controversial being the large painting "Sleeping Beauty" which was relocated from the entrance of the Swedish school that commissioned the work in 2017.