Åsa Jungnelius: The Bittersweet

The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm presents The Bittersweet, a solo show by Åsa Jungnelius. The small exhibition includes a series of sculptures that she has been developing over the last couple of years, and which continue her exploration of themes around desire, power and materials. Works are made in stone, including Carrera marble from Italy, a vibrant green granite from the north of Norway and porphyry from Egypt, along with sculptures in glass. It was an important part of the process for Jungnelius to visit the locations where the stone was extracted, to understand its origins. She describes the green granite from this northern region, which has no borders and is part of the indigenous Scandinavian people as “the landscape taking rhythm within the stone.”

Jungnelius works in a slow, intuitive way, trusting the material to show her the way and letting its power and natural qualities come through. “This is easiest to see on the large cast glass works that play with gravity,” she explains, “where the impossible becomes possible, thanks to the collaboration with the craftsman I work with.” This idea of working with trust and gravity can be seen in the sculpture The Dense, Hot Inner Core II, 2024, that features a cast glass sculpture in green, its form suggestive of something bodily, or literally an oozing force frozen in time. It connects to a metal pole for support and rests on a carved marble plinth that looks like an architectural fragment, or “like it was eaten away by little mice, which was me,” jokes Jungnelius.

A central sculpture titled Plummet, 2025, consists of a long-woven cord suspended from the ceiling with small piece of imperial porphyry attached below, suggestive of a pendulum or a plumb line. Porphyry was once coveted by the Romans and used by the Egyptians for sarcophagi and other objects connected to power and wealth. The piece speaks directly to this – the craziness of power systems – when a stone or object is deemed valuable, how everything shifts to close it off to others. The stone, regal and precious, hangs from a rope made by the artist while walking in the fields of Småland, using only natural fibers and materials. “It shows how mother earth can provide us with everything we need but the desire for power somehow destroys the whole system.” As Olga Krzeszowiec Malmsten writes in the show’s text, “Desire carries contradictions. It contains both satisfaction that we have someone (or something) we can channel our energy into, and sadness that what we desire is not yet ours. There is also a notion of ownership here, sometimes in direct conflict with one’s own self-image. The bittersweet arises in the friction between feeling and reason.”

Jungnelius uses generic metal scaffolding in her installations as a way to cut the prettiness of the glass or stone, to let them speak more as sculptures, and place the works in a position between the past and future. For the artist, scaffolding, so common in our everyday lives, can be used as something to protect a new building being constructed, – or like, in Italy, used on ancient structures to hold up the past.

Into My Arms is a flattened, curving bronze cast sculpture that serves as a guide, it’s rounded branches or arms placed in different directions. The piece is very earthy and matte in comparison to the glass and stone pieces, the textures of human hands and from the casting process seen on its surface.

Set within the classical walls of the Academy, the sculptures reveal their stories, their wounds and their beauty. The Bittersweet reminds us of the duality found within life such as, love and power, death and life, trust and betrayal, themes that Jungnelius continues to explore in poetic and unexpected ways.

Academy of Fine Arts

@konstakademien

www.asajungnelius.se

@asajungnelius