For all of you who heard about it for the first time, Supermarket is the independent art fair of Stockholm; an international artist-run art fair for artist-run galleries and other artists’ initiatives from all over the world to create opportunities for new networks in the Swedish as well as the international art scene. Held in Kulturhuset – The House of Culture in Stockholm – the fair has grown up to with exhibitors within a network of 80 galleries from 40 different countries. One of the main ideas is to invite artist to make art as an interactive art itself. The program includes seminars and performance arts. The whole idea about Supermarket is to create an international gathering, new unexpected meeting experiences, rather than focus on sales.

Initiated and organized by artists, this project has rapidly evolved from a modest group of local initiatives to a full-fledged international art exhibition that has made its mark and helped firmly establish Stockholm on the art world map. In fact, it has a great support from different cultural and governmental institutions worldwide.

The offer is quite extensive. We decided to stroll around the venue to see what was going on. Here are a few highlights that grabbed our attention.

Welcome to Grad (Belgrade). The GRAD – European Center for Culture and Debate, also known as KC GRAD, was opened in 2009. It is product of a joint initiative of the Cultural Front Belgrade and the Amsterdam Felix Meritis Foundation. Situated in a former warehouse built in 1884 located in the old rundown industrial area in the center of Belgrade.

Dejan Ubivic and Ljudmila Stratimirovic are co-directors and co-founders. The big gallery focuses on domestic and international contemporary art and design. They also have a music program with international innovative artist of different genres; in the last year artists from the like of Glass Candy, Caribou, Sascha Funke or David Carreta, to mention a few.

Lo and Behold’s (Athens) participation in Supermarket 2012 is “Public Domain,” a call for artists to create within the bounds of the urban landscape, and uses as an index, the unique nature of an artist approach in an environment which is globalized, featuring similar problems and circumstances. The participating artists follow a specific working process both in terms of method and end result. They are asked to imagine and to realize an intervention on a public site in the city where they live. Afterwards they are to photograph the intervention and submit it in the form of a poster. These posters will be exhibited at Lo and Behold’s booth at Supermarket. Some artists participating in this projects were Guerrilla Girls, Luke Ralphs, Emma Hammarén or Magnus Thierfelder, among many others.

Hjärnstorm (Stockholm) is a project that exposes Ikea’s founder, Ingvar Kamprad as a storyteller and his background directed by a PR company and not being real, so taking over the Swedish myth and how it came to life on false background to sell a “Swedish” lifestyle. So actually Ikeas sells lifestyle rather than furniture, a fiction, a dream packed in a Ikea box, instead of the personal affections and the need of your personal needs, lack of personality, about how your home should look like, instead of how you actually need it to be.

Fotogalerie Wien (Wien) is a non-profit organization organized as an association for the advancement of artistic photography and new media. The collective acts as an information gallery running independently from trends set by the commercial mainstream. Founded in 1981 by Josef Wais, a team of seven artists working in with photography began the exhibition program in 1982 at our current location Werkstätten und Kulturhaus (WUK) (studios and culture house). It was very nice meeting team coordinators Melanie Ender and Bettina Kattinger, so we had time to talk about current gallery projects and the interesting current art scene in Wien, at the time I was presented with their 30th anniversary book. The book includes an archive of images, which illustrates the galley’s history throughout the three decades; what do these three decades mean for photography? They invited a few artists, colleagues and experts to send them their statement as a birthday gift. 30 personal statements for a 30th birthday of 30 years of photography! The gallery focuses on showing contemporary art photography, interdisciplinary projects and new media. Their commitment is to present not only internationally renewed artists but above all the work of younger artists from Austria and abroad.

Supermarket 2012
Date: February 17th – February 19th, 2012
Open: 11:00- 22:00
Place: Kulturhuset
Address: Sergels torg 3 – 7, 11157 Stockholm
Entrance fee: 100 SEK (children under 16 free)
Tel: +46 (0)8 508 31 341
info@supermarketartfair.com
https://supermarketartfair.com