Exhibition: Ulrika Sparre at Handels

Photo: Fredrik Sweger

The 12 meter long text-based artwork ON A CLEAR DAY I CAN SEE FOREVER (2015-2024) by Ulrika Sparre is installed at the balcony of the SSE main building by Art Initiative as part of the exhibition Ulrika Sparre at Handels.

In her art, Ulrika Sparre draws our attention to the mystery of existence. The phrase on the banner balances on the border between poetry and existential uncertainty. What does such a sentence mean? Is it a maxime (words of wisdom)? Or is it a mantra that Ulrika Sparre provides us with? Are the words a slogan for a long term perspective?  

The exhibition also involves the lightbox As I reach up I will eventually reach the horizon, 2012 (on the stage in the atrium of the school); the film Ear to the Ground (Golden Monolith & Black Monolith), 2024 (on the small screen in the north corridor); the sculptures In the future when all mysteries are solved, 2018, The entire universe is created by me, 2018, and five Antennstenar (“Antenna Stones”), 2017 (in the north corridor, ground floor windows).

In the film Ear to the Ground (Golden Monolith & Black Monolith), 2024, Ulrika seeks contact with a stone in the Bregaglia Valley, the landscape where the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) grew up. Sparre enters a dialogue with the stone through the poem Conversations with a stone by Wislawa Szymborska from 1962. This is the first time the film is shown in Sweden. In the window niches right across the screen, five antenna stones are seeking contact. Resting in another window are two more stones: one engraved black diabas stone, In the future when all mysteries are solved, and one red granite stone with the text The entire universe is created by me. True, or what?

The exhibition is open for external guests office hours on weekdays. Use the entrance from Bertil Ohlins gata.

Ulrika Sparre was born 1974 and is educated at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design and at Gerrit Rietveld Academie in The Netherlands. She works with installations, performance, sculpture, photo, film and sound.

For more info:

Tinni Ernsjöö Rappe, director Art Initiative, tinni.rappe@hhs.se, 0708-366641.

Still from Ear to the Ground (Golden Monolith & Black Monolith), 2024.