Sleepless

Mamma Andersson: Sleepless

Publisher: David Zwirner Books

Publication Date: 2024

Text by Karl Ove Knausgaard

A celebration of the representation, figuration, and classical antiquity in Mamma Andersson’s newest paintings.

"When I look at this collection of pictures, . . . what strikes me first is the image-making capacity itself and the endless stream of images it brings forth and always has brought forth into the world.” —Karl Ove Knausgaard, Mamma Andersson: Sleepless

The Swedish painter Mamma Andersson draws inspiration from a wide range of photographic source materials, art history, filmic imagery, theater sets, and period interiors, as well as the sparse topography of northern Sweden. The paintings and works on paper collected in this volume explore atmosphere and mood through representations of masks, statues, and figurines, which take on a dreamlike, mythical quality in stark silhouettes. While recalling classical genres of still life, landscape, and interiors, this body of work, painted in 2021 and 2022, blends our sense of the past, present, and future.

A companion to the artist’s previous books A Storm Warning and The Lost Paradise, this limited-run publication features a new essay by Karl Ove Knausgaard. The text considers the history and evolution of the human desire to depict our surroundings, placing Andersson’s doubled renderings—“pictures of pictures”—within a tradition of painting not from life but from representations of life.

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Details

Publisher: David Zwirner Books

Artist: Mamma Andersson

Contributors: Karl Ove Knausgaard

Publication Date: 2024

ISBN: 9781644231234

Retail: $50 | $65 CAN | £38

Status: Available

Designer: Greger Ulf Nilson / GunLab

Printer: Narayana Press, Denmark

Binding: Hardcover

Dimensions: 9.25 × 11.74 in | 23.5 × 30 cm

Pages: 72

Reproductions: 31 illustrations

Artist and Contributors

Mamma Andersson

Characterized by a unique combination of textured brushstrokes, loose washes, stark graphic lines, and evocative colors, Mamma Andersson’s (b. 1962) works embody a new genre of painting that recalls late nineteenth-century romanticism while also embracing a contemporary interest in layered, psychological compositions that draw inspiration from a wide range of source materials.

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard is a Norwegian author. He became known worldwide for six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle. He has been described as "one of the 21st century's greatest literary sensations" by the Wall Street Journal. Since the completion of the My Struggle series in 2011, he has also published an autobiographical series entitled The Seasons Quartet, as well as critical work on the art of Edvard Munch.

$50