CHART 2016: JOHAN BERGGREN GALLERY

A former factory building in the unpolished Möllevången-area in Malmö provides the framework of one of Sweden’s most interesting emerging galleries. For gallerist Johan Berggren it’s important to be involved in all the stages of a project – he believes in trial and error and is not afraid to take risks.

Johan Berggren Gallery was founded in the spring of 2009 with an aim to present young and emerging artists from all over the world. In the beginning Johan’s focus was centered around the Städelschule in Frankfurt, to which he was introduced by his friend artist Fredrik Værslev, but now his eyes are pointed to various corners of the Scandinavian, European and North American scene. “In the years to come, we hope to reach out even further,” Johan states on his website.

Gallerist Johan Berggren | Photos by Rikke Luna & Matias © I DO ART Agency.

We visited Johan Berggren on one of the early summer’s rare sunny days, short after the opening of american artist Tabor Robak’s exhibition Sunflower Seed, which is his first solo show outside of the US. Robak has developed a series of screen-based artworks that all generate their imagery via custom-build computers and complex algorithms. The works are designed so that they do not loop, but constantly evolve, making it statistically impossible that the same image will appear twice. Especially the large nine-panel piece of colorful, glitch-like abstraction drew us into its world of digital infinity and once we started engaging with the work it was hard to get our eyes off of it again. Truly hypnotizing.

We took a chat with Johan Berggren about what art means to him, the importance of risk taking and in what part of his job he feels the most at ease. Below you can see the full video interview that we have made in collaboration with Chart Art Fair where Johan Berggren Gallery will be present.

Chart Art Fair runs from the 26th - 28th of August, 2016 at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. More info here.