Charlotte Gyllenhammar
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"Sitting Giant Miniature"
Signed CG and dated 2019. Edition 11/30. Patinated bronze, height 25 cm.
Provenance
Tom Böttiger Collection, Stockholm.
More information
Charlotte Gyllenhammar is an artist who has her own universe where perspectives are often reversed. In her public breakthrough in 1993, with the work "Dö för dig", she hung an oak tree with the root up and the crown down over Drottninggatan in Stockholm.
The upside-down hanging oak, bronze sculptures with exposed women hanging upside down or small children wrapped in baggy overalls that evoke feelings of both tenderness and anxiety, film projections and photographs - Charlotte Gyllenhammar moves effortlessly between different worlds, techniques, and modes of expression. Her artistry moves in a field of tension between identity, fragility and transformation. She examines what it means to be a human being, thrown into a reality that is not under our control, either in terms of the family or the society we grow up in.
Gyllenhammar shows how participation can turn into paralysis, and how life can turn into death, but she also shows the opposite - how dead forms can become alive by being duplicated or deformed, how seemingly isolated works can be activated by the movements of bodies in space and ongoing social games.
Charlotte Gyllenhammar was born in Gothenburg in 1963. She was educated at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and the Royal College of Art in London. Gyllenhammar is represented in many collections with individual works and is behind a large number of public works, such as the memorial to Dag Hammarskjöld at Uppsala Castle and a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg commissioned by the City of Gothenburg. She has participated in several international exhibitions - including the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Venice Biennale in Italy and the Biwako Biennale in Japan in 2020. Gyllenhammar has been named Artist of the Year 2023 by the Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation and has created a site-specific sculptural work that is permanently displayed in the Princess Estelle Sculpture Park on Royal Djurgården in Stockholm.
Artist
Charlotte Gyllenhammar is a well-known Swedish artist who was born in Gothenburg in 1963. She studied at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and continued her studies at The Royal College of Art in London. Her significant breakthrough in the Swedish art scene came in 1993 with the artwork 'Dö för dig', where Gyllenhammar suspended a 120-year-old oak tree upside down over Drottninggatan in central Stockholm. The piece garnered enormous attention. In 2023, she followed up with a new installation at the same location, this time featuring an even larger tree with lush foliage and a more extensive root system. The new artwork was named 'Dö för dig/Slå rot'.
Following her breakthrough, Gyllenhammar created several works with perspective-challenging motifs, exploring subjects such as identity, memories, captivity, and the tension between private and public. In her catalog of sculptural installations is 'Svindel' from 2002; a blown-up, upside-down version of her own studio, the artwork has now become a permanent indoor installation located in the Wanås Sculpture Park.
Gyllenhammar is represented in several collections and has created numerous public artworks, including the memorial monument to Dag Hammarskjöld at Uppsala Castle and Raoul Wallenberg's memorial commissioned by the City of Gothenburg. She has also participated in several international exhibitions, such as those at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Venice Biennale in Italy, and the Biwako Biennale in Japan in 2020. In 2023, Charlotte Gyllenhammar was named Artist of the Year by Princess Estelle's Cultural Foundation.