The exhibition, Moderna Museet c/o BildMuseet / Dada and Surrealism, is comprised of about fifty Swedish and international works dating from 1921 to 1999.
In connection with the refurbishment of the museum building on Skeppsholmen, a few museums outside Stockholm have been offered theopportunity to show highlights from the Moderna Museet collection. Bildmuseet is the only museum in northern Sweden to take part in this collaboration with Moderna Museet.
The exhibition takes dada and surrealism as its point of departure. These two influential movements were conceived during the first decades of the 20th century. Their motifs and themes are clearlyrecognizable also in today's art. The exhibition includes both classics from the movement's beginnings as well as works by artists of later generations which in different ways continue the ideas and attitudes of the dada movement and of surrealism.
Dada questioned traditional notions of art as well as the ruling orders of society, while embracing the meanings of chance and of the absurd in existence. Surrealism investigated and visualized the landscapes of the unconscious where dreams, myths, and desires create new and enigmatic worlds.
The early works from the first half of the 1900s include Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel, Meret Oppenheim's My Nurse, Toyen's The Myth of Light, Öyvind Fahlström's Ade-Ledic-Nander, and lithographs by René Magritte. Among the contemporary artists represented in theexhibition are Marie-Louise Ekman, Carsten Höller, Yayoi Kusama, Eva Löfdahl, Maria Miesenberger, Julie Roberts and Dan Wolgers.
A pamphlet has been produced for the exhibition as a guide to the works. Exhibition production has been managed jointly by Moderna Museet and Bildmuseet, in co-operation with the Faculty of Art Theory at Umeå University.
