Kent Iwemyr | The Extra Rough Collection

The Extra Rough Collection is Kent Iwemyr’s fifth solo exhibition at the gallery. It is also his comeback after several years of absence from the Swedish art scene, when he mostly been shown in Italy and Germany. 

"…If Kent Iwemyr’s art is regarded in this light, a poet appears with an ability to convey pathos for the lives of discarded and downtrodden people. These qualities may be interpreted, at our latitude, as exoticism; as something’un-Swedish’ and, perhaps, a disrupting element. After a while, we realize that Iwemyr’s figures and their living dramas, find themselves rather close to what we have experienced in, for example, Emir Kusturica’s films about gypsy drop-outs in the chaos of the Balkans, Fellini’s Italian family tornadoes, or Aki Kaurismäki’s wind-blown individuals. It would be easy to banish them to the lowest peg of the social ladder - an almost impossible task, however, due to the opposition.
Iwemyr often arranges his figures in his pictures as though they were in a play or group portrait, and, no matter what they are doing, or how embarrassing the situation happens to be, they seek our gaze, dignified and, for all the world, unconcerned. This is prevalent even when they are involved in complicated struggles in life; because they seem to be aware of being observed, yet do not mind.
Iwemyr, Kosturica, Fellini and Kaurismäki are united in their simultaneous experience of life as an insoluble conglomerate of sadness, joy, light and darkness. Humour is continually present, despite having a very dark edge. We should definitely not dismiss Iwemyr as naïve or simple, (even if his painting is as direct as a football commentary), for it contains subtle points of view and is characterized by a humanism sparing neither high nor low. He delivers an art-experience of a different kind - not to surrender to it is difficult."
Extract from catalogue essay by Anders Olofsson, 2003.
(Translation by Guy Roger Bastin)