Milan, at Teatro Oscar the solo exhibition Think of Knut by Swedish artist Sophie Westerlind

From March 28 to April 24, 2022, the Oscar deSidera Theater at 58 Via Lattanzio in Milan presents the solo exhibition of Swedish artist Sophie Westerlind (Stockholm, 1985) entitled Think Knut!, curated by Erica Roccella and Luca Zuccala. This is the second exhibition in the new Casa Testori space chaired by Giuseppe Frangi, art critic and president of the Giovanni Testori Association.

The protagonists of the exhibition are Sophie’s father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Westerlind, posing. The title is intended almost as a grimace, a distracted onomatopoeia that evokes the artist’s admonition during painting sessions at his studio in Giudecca, Venice. “Think of Knut!” he would say: an invitation aimed at moving a gesture, a wrinkle of his father’s, and then succeeding in portraying him, at ease, in the painting. The result is a square canvas (120 x 120 cm), conceived especially for the Milan exhibition, which translates into painting the conversations with the two curators, all centered on the themes of threshold, limbo, limit, liminal, to the point of enclosing, dialectically, the very concept of scene. There is all of this on Sophie’s canvas, elements that concern the theatrical and existential dimensions of the work, human relationships, and being, with continuous encounters-clashes between the artist’s private sphere and universal reality.

Who is the Knut that gives the exhibition its title? The answer is resolved on two tracks: in a narrow sense, he is a nice, very young grandson of the Westerlind family; in a broad sense, the name Knut refers to an old and obsolete name in Sweden (our Eustace, Muzio, Ugo, to make the point), names not really suitable for calling a child. The title, Think of Knut!, dunquie tries to infuse a wise lightness and levity to the tragic, burdensome and suspended wait of the picture.

“Think of Knut!, and it’s immediate laughter; perhaps confused - almost like repeating aloud a foreign word, and suddenly not being sure of its original meaning,” the curators explain. “Think of Knut!, and one struggles to decipher the psyche and thoughts of the two subjects portrayed, now silently suspended and seated inside the foyer of the Oscar Theater, now abandoned in a wearisome, palpable wait. Think Knut! Leaning on a threshold, absorbed almost in a dream, evoked by glances in which the confrontation with the liminal thickness emerges and breathes, tangible, Mr. and Mrs. Westerlind seem to peer at reality from the curtain of the canvas.They do not know whether to cross the curtain, perhaps, whether to mingle with the audience, whether to crash, material,on the reality of things. And we along with them, bodies dispersed in the space-boundary of the foyer. Observing, pondering, entering, freezing or going beyond, getting lost in the experience of the blocks of color that make up the expression of the faces, catching the texture of the painting, its thick flesh melting into the eyes. It melts away, like the raw thoughts that that monosyllabic verse - Knut! - tried to disguise.”

Sophie Westerlind (Stockholm, 1985) is a Swedish painter based in Venice, Italy. She draws and paints mostly from life, stimulated by experience and the impact that people, environments and things have on her. She studied in London at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art. An Erasmus scholarship at the University of Padua enabled her to get close to the masters of Venetian painting. Her great interest in the expressiveness of the human body then brought her back to Italy and the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where she did in-depth studies on anatomy and Tintoretto’s masterful compositions. In 2019, she received a national drawing fellowship from Konstakademien in Sweden. Her drawings were exhibited at the Museum of Antiquities in Stockholm. In Italy the same year she was invited to exhibit her paintings in dialogue with one of Tintoretto’s masterpieces at the Museo Diocesano in Belluno-Feltre curated by Gianluca D’Incà Levis. A stimulus and a source of inspiration for Westerlind are artist residencies because they allow a fundamental confrontation and dialogue with people and environments. She is currently in the residency Cité international desarts, Paris, in collaboration with Konstakademien, Sweden. In Italy she was in 2019 hosted by Dolomiti Contemporanee in Borca di Cadore, in 2020 in Porto Marghera at the Fincantieri shipyard in collaboration with VeniceGalleriesView, in 2021 in Fano for the Lido Contemporaneo residency curated by Luca Zuccala, Caterina Angelucci and Andrea Tinterri. Now he is on view until April 16 in Reggio Emilia with the solo exhibition “Yes, I used to be a greatdancer” curated by the NEUTRAL project. The large-scale oil pastel drawings focus on the expressive personalities of her grandmothers Ingrid and Siv. She lives and works between Sweden and Italy and is represented in Italy by Michela Rizzo Gallery.

Pictured: Sophie Westerlind, Think Knut! (2022)

Milan, at Teatro Oscar the solo exhibition Think of Knut by Swedish artist Sophie Westerlind

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