The Mission welcomed Johan Strandahl as a resident in October, 2014. As part of his residency he created a new piece for the Sculpture Park. Strandahl is a Swedish artist who lives and works in Stockholm. His practice includes a variety of techniques and forms that interrogate self sustainability, living off the grid, and designed obsolescence. He often recreates by hand, mass produced cheap consumer goods; not in a quest to make them more precious, but from the basic principle of mastery. His process is that of foundational deconstruction and reconstruction, a method that introduces ruptures in the relationships we have with the manufactured objects that surround us.
Strandahl earned his MFA from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm in 2006. His work has been exhibited in Sweden and internationally including solo shows in Sweden at Gallery Niklas Belenius, Stockholm Konst, Petra Lilja Design Gallery in Malmö, Örebro Konsthall and internationally at Telemark Artist Center in Skien, Norway and the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. Group exhibitions in Sweden have taken place at Norrköpings Museum, Biologiska Museum in Stockholm, OpenART in Örebro, Carl Eldhs Studio Museum in Stockholm, Örebro County Museum, Kalmar Museum, Labyrint 09 at Botkyrka Konsthall in Tumba, Bonniérs Konsthall in Stockholm, the Liljevalchs Spring Salon in Stockholm, Umedalen Sculpture Park in Umeå, Kulturhuset in Stockholm, and Moderna Museum in Stockholm. His work has been seen internationally at Kunsthalle zu Kiel in Germany. Strandahl is represented by Belenius/Nordenhake. His work is held within the following collections: Statens Konstråd, Stockholm County Council, Örebro Municipality, Kalmar Museum, and Botkyrka Konsthall.
