Exhibition view from Iwo Myrin / Memories from the Taiga at Bildmuseet.
Foreground: Iwo Myrin, Two Dark Brown Brittlegills 59° 24’ 52” N, 018° 14’ 06” E 04.10.2017, 2017/2021. Photo: Mikael Lundgren.
Iwo Myrin’s motifs are drawn from the taiga, the geographical zone of the northern hemisphere dominated by coniferous forest. In his bronze casts and pinhole photographs of mushrooms, pine needles and moss, the taiga makes a direct impression on his art.
The artist uses the simplest imaginable camera: a lensless box with a small hole on one short side and a photosensitive film on the opposite side. The landscapes that emerge in the grainy photographs are reminiscent of dreamed worlds.
His cast bronzes are a variant of cire perdue (lost wax) in which nature itself is the original model. As well as supporting these small excisions from reality, the airways and casting ducts that remain as part of the sculpture reference fungal root systems, mycelia.
Iwo Myrin (b. 1964) lives and works in Stockholm. A graduate of Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, Myrin has had public commissions and a large number of exhibitions, and is represented in the collections of Public Art Agency Sweden, as well as various municipalities and regional authorities.
