Summer 1970 (2021)
Film (36 min) and objects
Camera, poster, copies and magazines
 

Exhibition text from Ystad Artmuseum (Ystad Konstmuseum)

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The exhibition is based on a new film by Henrik Lund Jørgensen entitled Summer 1970, after Gerhard Nordström's painting suite of the same name from the early 1970s. In the film, Lund Jørgensen dives into a selection of Nordström's politically charged paintings with the aim of getting deeper into the image's content and highlighting what we don't see. Lund Jørgensen looks at environments and materials that inspired Nordström and he visits museums and other places where Nordström's paintings are found. In the film, we move between time and space, between contemporary and history, between the personal and the universal, and between reality and fiction. We get to take part in different stories and interpretations when we meet, in addition to the artists themselves, people who relate to the artworks in different ways.

In his artistry, Henrik Lund Jørgensen examines images that we are surrounded by, how they are perceived and what significance they have in our time. In the film Summer 1970, he takes an interest in Nordström's photorealistic paintings from the 1970s and 80s, which deal with war and disasters, people's violence against people and the environment. As the film's title claims, some of Nordström's works from the painting suite Summer 1970 are presented. The paintings that are today owned by various museums and other public collections in Sweden deal with the Vietnam War and have throughout the ages both been praised and provoked opposition from viewers and critics. In the film and at the exhibition, we also encounter other politically charged paintings by Nordström.