Alexander Lervik

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SERES2 100 LERVIK

SERES2 100 LERVIK · Portraits & interviews · 5 pages

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Lena's studio is on Skinnarviksberget in Stockholm. Here, she and her son Alexander Lervik are working on a sculpture for his exhibition Imaginations, which will be shown during the first week of February at Sven Harrys konsthall in Vasaparken.

VIGNETTE

ON THE MOTHER'S SIDE Alexander Lervik is one of Sweden's most famous designers. His mother Lena Lervik is one of Sweden's foremost sculptors. We visited when they collaborated for the first time. Text IMKE JANOSCHEK Photo ANDY LIFFNER

One of many children's faces in Lena Lervik's studio.

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IN LENA LERVIK'S STUDIO

»IN THE '70S, ONLY ARTISTS WERE SUPPOSED TO LIVE HERE. BESIDES, NOT MANY PEOPLE WANTED TO LIVE IN THESE DRAFTY HOUSES.« In the foreground, Skyddsmantelmadonnan, which stands outside Lund Cathedral. In the background against the wall, three sculptures of the Apocalyptic Madonna.

Lena Lervik is today one of our foremost and most sought-after sculptors within the church and public spaces – that she became so prominent in the church happened more or less by chance. At one of her first exhibitions, which took place in the late '70s, almost no press showed up. Well, one male reviewer came, but turned around at the door because he refused to deal with »women's art«.

»I had named the exhibition '8 Nutidsmadonnor' without thinking very much about it. I was an atheist then, and hadn't had a thought that my mother-and-child sculptures connected to the cult of Mary. Only one reviewer came, from the Christian newspaper Dagen. She wrote a very good article, and after that the requests started coming from the church.«

During the '70s, it was practically taboo to deal with mother-child relationships the way Lena did. To also associate with the church was even more suspicious.

In her studio, located among the red heritage cottages on Skinnarviksberget on Södermalm in Stockholm, the pale winter light is fantastic. Lena wears a white smock woven by the women at the prison on Långholmen, her work uniform for decades. Her son Alexander Lervik, one of Sweden's most famous designers, points toward a window leading to a loft room. »Up there was my room when I was little; I used to peek down through the window. I really grew up here right in the middle of the studio.«

THAT LENA BECAME an artist was also a kind of coincidence. She was on her way home after a year as an au pair in France when she was 20. In Geneva, she was at the train station and ran into a friend who was going to apply to L’école des beaux arts. A somewhat frustrated Lena, who hadn't had much fun during her year as a nanny in Paris, decided to come along for company. At the school, they thought she was an applicant too, and suddenly she found herself in front of a lump of clay, about to sculpt for the first time in her life. It went incredibly well. »It wasn't difficult at all.« Lena was admitted. She completed the program and then added another education in Sweden, at Konstnärsakademin.

During her years at Konstnärsakademin she had three children in quick succession. Her career as a sculptor stalled. But she didn't want to become a housewife. In her second marriage, Lena married another artist, Thomas Qvarsebo. Lena's professor arranged for the couple to take over his studio and home on Skinnarviksberget.

»Our professor went up to the place that allocated the houses and said: These two should have my house. And that was that,« Lena says. »In the '70s, only artists were supposed to live here. Besides, not many people wanted to live in these drafty houses; it was considered out of date.«

The house and the studio subsequently made life as a mother of four and working sculptor possible and considerably easier.

»We could make a living from this; it was like a miracle.«

Her first works in the studio were sculptures on the mother and child theme. The child's body was in her muscle memory, after years of close contact with her own children.

The first exhibition was 40 years ago now. Lena is still working with her theme, women's lives and children. All around us in the studio there are women everywhere, on shelves, and freestanding, on stools, on the floor. In clay and plaster, one in cardboard. Bodies, giving birth, breastfeeding, crying, sculptures bending down toward children and not reaching them, harmonious wet nurses with two children on their laps.

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LENA LERVIK AGE 79. LIVES On Södermalm in Stockholm. DOES Sculptor with an enormous number of sculptures in Sweden's public spaces and churches. ALEXANDER LERVIK AGE 47. LIVES On Södermalm in Stockholm. DOES Designer. CURRENT WITH The exhibition Imaginations at Sven Harrys Konsthall until February 9.

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IN LENA LERVIK'S STUDIO

VIGNETTE

»THE ARTICLE HAD AS ITS CREDO THAT YOU COULDN'T MAKE ART BEHIND THE KITCHEN CURTAIN. THAT IRRITATED ME ENDLESSLY.«

The sculpture of a woman's head as a young and old woman. »She was my neighbor for many years. I sculpted the young side based on a photo I found at her place.«

Alexander with the plaster model that will go off that same day to be cast in bronze.

Motherhood is Lena's central theme. »These are motifs that run through every human being's life. Everyone has been involved with it in one way or another, everyone is a child and many are parents. I had four children myself, after all.«

Lena recounts reading an article in Femina at the beginning of her career, with the headline: »Women, step out from behind the kitchen curtain!«

»IT HAD AS its credo that you couldn't make art behind the kitchen curtain. That irritated me so endlessly. You bet you can. I wanted to prove that.«

In the middle of the room this day there is also a large, tall chair in plaster. Gossamer-thin, more of a sculpture than a chair, reminiscent of Alberto Giacometti's work. Lena and Alexander tap the chair with tools in small, rapid movements. This is to produce a texture Lena often uses in her sculptures.

The chair is her son Alexander Lervik's work. He is exploring the borderland between art and design for his next exhibition, Imaginations, which opens on January 23 and will run until February 9 at Sven-Harrys Konstmuseum in Stockholm.

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Alexander (who was born in 1972) has been an active designer for more than twenty years. His design revolves largely around lighting and furniture design. He has won several awards and in recent years mounted major exhibitions. In 2018, Kulturhuset in Stockholm showed the exhibition I huvudet på Alexander Lervik, designer, where he examined his qualities as a designer, including his own laziness and carelessness during the design process. The new exhibition explores the boundary between design and art.

»I have asked myself what lies in the borderland,« says Alexander Lervik.

By immersing himself in studies of various art forms, he has created 12 different works that revolve around the subject of what human creativity contributes to – for better and for worse.

»The fun thing about this is that, as usual, I started on the computer. Then I came here, and then we made an armature first in the same scale but ten times as large, and then the dimensions were completely wrong.«

»That's the kind of thing you learn as a sculptor. You can't just enlarge things,« Lena chimes in.

»Mom's visual language has come in through the surface. It has become a lovely encounter,« says Alexander. His career as a designer began in the 2000s. He has designed numerous products such as chairs, lamps, exercise equipment and more, and has also done a number of exhibitions, often in connection with Stockholm design week.

The Apocalyptic Madonna in close-up. 2/2020 107

IN LENA LERVIK'S STUDIO VIGNETTE

God's spirit can be sensed in a gust of wind moving a piece of fabric.

During the afternoon, the chair will go to the foundry in Västberga to be cast in bronze.

»This will be sand casting,« Lena explains, detailing various processes for producing sculptures. Casting in bronze is expensive.

Alexander begins talking about how one will eventually end up 3D printing sculptures instead. Something that seems a bit like heresy when standing in the wonderful environment that Lena's studio offers.

In a corner stands a sculpture depicting a more abstract female body with a very small head. The body stands with straight legs bent forward over a child, but the arms do not reach the child.

»YES, NO ONE has wanted to buy that one,« Lena says when she notices my gaze. »But I feel that it is important. My life has been that too. There have been many days when I've felt like the world's worst mother and the world's worst sculptor.«

Lena turns 80 this year. She has four children and eight grandchildren. And has been active her entire life.

The photographer and I are drawn to an incredible sculpture representing a piece of fabric waving in the wind. Lena quotes the Bible. »If you pull a piece of fabric, God is the gust of wind you perceive when the fabric falls back.«

She is full of knowledge, it almost spills over.

When she held her first exhibition on the contemporary Madonnas in 1979, she was, as mentioned, an atheist. After the exhibition, she took part in a Mary seminar at Sigtunastiftelsen. »It turned out to be an extraordinarily open-minded atmosphere. It was a really exciting entry point for starting to read. The more you find out, the more exciting it gets.«

Is she a believer today?

»One day you believe, the next day you don't. The Bible is about our lives. If you have learned to read it.«

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English translation of the original article. Text read from the scanned original; small transcription errors may occur.