“The Rorschach Test” by Lena Mattsson
“The Rorschach Test” is a multifaceted film about life and its shortcomings. The film touches upon normative questions on what is considered sick or healthy in contemporary times. Lena Mattsson illuminates life, art and film history in a poetic and metaphorical way in the film “The Rorschach test”. The foundational question is; What is normal? Is the answer always in the eye of the beholder?
Actor: Ebba Melber
Music: Conny C-A Malmqvist.
Synopsis
“Not without gloves” by Lena Mattsson
Lena Mattsson’s experimental film “Not without gloves” reveals the common identity that we share in the experience and memory of the landscapes we come from, which in this case is also Mattson’s own origin.
The film problematizes a romantic nature experience through various distortions, interpretations and questioning of the original place. Instead, we get to enter as visitors in a magical world. Where Mattsson in a poetic way highlights issues concerning the COVID-19 pandemic and global environmental changes in our time.
Music: Conny C-A Malmqvist.
Synopsis
“The Aesthetics of Failure” by Lena Mattsson
“The Aesthetics of Failure” is a short, experimental, and deeply poetic film where Lena Mattsson explores universal human reflections on failure. In black and white, the film illuminates the quiet courage to embrace the beauty of the imperfect.
Lena Mattsson (b. 1966, Kungshamn) lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. She is primarily known for her work in moving image, yet her artistic journey began as a painter. She is also active as a curator of contemporary art. Mattsson’s own oeuvre frequently enters into a profound dialogue with art history and cinema, engaging in an intense, ongoing conversation with both the present moment and the depths of the past.
Trained at Målarskolan Forum—today the Malmö Art Academy—she has presented her art works, films, and video installations in numerous exhibitions across Sweden and the world. In Sweden, her work has appeared at, among others, Moderna Museet Malmö, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö Konstmuseum, the Nordic Watercolour Museum in Skärhamn, Nässjö Konsthall, Göteborgs Konsthall, Borås Konstmuseum, Island of Light in Smögen, and the art hall of Bohusläns Museum. Internationally, selected venues include Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur, the Metropolitan Art Museum in Pusan, South Korea, and many more. Her films have garnered awards at international film festivals worldwide; among the most celebrated are The Rorschach Test and Not Without Gloves: The Aesthetics of Failure. At present, Lena Mattsson is preparing and shooting new works that will be unveiled in a major solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Kungliga Akademien för de fria konsterna) in Stockholm, accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue. In Lena Mattsson’s artistic practice, borders dissolve; there are no fixed limits to what art, film, or the moving image may become. She continually stretches the boundaries of the possible, tailoring each film to its context and mode of presentation—sometimes as monumental projections flung across islands, cliffs, and façades in the public realm, sometimes as intimate, contemplative pieces screened at international festivals and art-house cinemas. Her works are almost invariably site-specific, responding to the particular spirit and history of the institutions and places that host them. At the heart of her inquiry lies the fragile relationship between perception, being, time, and space. Through a poetic and exquisitely sensitive visual language, she touches upon the existential themes that quietly haunt our lives. A subtle magical realism permeates her imagery: the seemingly obvious is gently tilted, revealing deeper dimensions and layers of symbolism. She weaves strands of her own lived experience into the fabric of the work, unafraid to pose the most difficult questions of existence, courageously opening the door to the shadowy, essential mysteries that dwell within us all.
