Born in Stockholm in 1977, Alexander Klingspor chose to skip a Swedish art education and instead do his learning in America. Inspired by Renaissance, baroque and 1800’s realism, he went to study realistic art and illustration under Mark English in Missouri. Now living in New York, Klingspor turned that education in realism into a tool to create heavy, hallucinogenic surrealistic works, subjects depicted in rich detail but with reality oddly bent around them. Klingspor exhibits regularly in the US and UK, and now Sweden has a chance to see his works with Resenär, his new exhibition at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde.

“A life lived with one foot in the past and the other in the now is a life of questioning things. As an artist, studying western art and its history is a reminder of how certain things remain the same. Happiness, beauty, desire, vanity, greed, etc, run like a red thread though all the ages, as far as we can see. The time we live in is no exception. Resenär is a self-study in existential search through painting, and a desire, a pursuit, after a meaningful relation to our world in a time of materialistic wealth and over-consumption”, said Klingspor about the exhibition.

Waldemarsudde’s Karin Sidén says “For an art institution like Waldemarsudde it’s a challenge to exhibit Klingspor’s work, which opens up interesting reflections and conversations about the chosen art, about figurative painting, our time’s surrealism and the art scenes and art markets in the USA and in Sweden”. The exhibition will be accompanied by articles from the art historian Peter Trippi, culture writer Ida Therén, Sidén and Klingspor himself. The museum will also host a conversation/ Q’n’A event with Klingspor on Thursday, March 8.

Alexander Klingspor, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, On display until May 27

Photo: Alexander Klingspor, Cult of Delusion, 2016. Oil on canvas, 180 x 210 cm. Photo: Gary Mamay