Farewell Welfare | KHÅK Kunsthall
- Mar 27
- 3 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
KHÅK Kunsthall is a wonderful art venue in Ålesund, located on Norway’s west coast. The Ålesund Art Association runs the space that also houses Kjell Holm's art collection.
I’m very grateful for the opportunity to exhibit in this beautiful setting, and I’m extremely pleased with the result. I consider this to be one of my strongest exhibitions to date.
I presented nearly thirty works from recent years, which together form a narrative about Sweden, the lost promise of social democracy, and questions of political struggle and our future.
You can read the press release here (in Norwegian).
I was very fortunate when it came to transporting my works. Initially, I had planned to rent a car, as I usually do, and had arranged for a friend to accompany me and help with both driving and installation.
However, I learned that the venue was already using a driver specialised in art transport to return artworks. As it turned out, the previous exhibitor lived near Oslo, which meant the driver could pick up my works on the way back to Ålesund. I was even able to join the ride myself.
It worked out perfectly.
The journey from Oslo to Ålesund was smooth, and the final part of the trip was particularly breathtaking. Shortly before nightfall, we paused to admire the renowned Trollveggen (the ogre wall).
The installation process went well, thanks to the driver, Dagfinn Bjørge, who also worked as an exhibition technician for the venue. He regularly assists the renowned artist Ørnulf Opdahl, so he clearly knew what he was doing.
This allowed me to focus on arranging my installation and sculptural pieces, as well as hanging the dried roses and other elements on top of some of the paintings. Still, it took a whole day, and I was quite tired when it was done, particularly because of my bad knee.
A guy from a signage company also came by to install the vinyl text of the exhibition title and my name on the entrance window. He even helped mount my text-based wall piece, making it look effortless. I had originally planned to do this myself, as I used to work with similar tasks when I was younger—but it would likely have been quite tricky.
The venue covered one night at a nearby, fancy hotel, and I decided to treat myself by staying there for the additional two nights required for installation and the opening.
The opening was enjoyable and drew an engaged and curious audience. There was wine, and Kristin Ulla Eiken, the head of the gallery, gave a very thoughtful speech. I also had the opportunity to say a few words myself.
Afterwards, I went out and had a nice steak with beer to celebrate.
Here are some overview images of the exhibition.
And a video showing the different "rooms" within the space.
The exhibition was conceived with a loose narrative, following a broad chronology—from the establishment of the Swedish welfare state, “folkhemmet,” through the struggles and organisation of the working class, to my own childhood and youth, shaped by the erosion and dismantling of this ideology. It continues into the present moment, marked by neoliberal policies, xenophobia, the rise of fascism, and an increasingly fragmented media landscape, and concludes with a hopeful, if utopian, proposal.
However, the architecture of the space did not allow the works to be installed in this sequence. I didn’t mind this, but here is the documentation of the works in their originally intended order.
I’m very grateful for the opportunity to realise this exhibition, which brings together the disparate strands of my work from recent years into—if not a fully coherent whole—at least a poetic and aesthetic expression of my perspective on society: how it has shaped me, and the state of things as they stand today.
Exhibited works:
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